Asian Artist Introduction: Faye Wong

I don't know what took me so long to write about Faye Wong, I guess Faye is just too popular a character in my book and I assume there was no need to go in depth introducing her. If there is any Hong Kong singer worth introducing, it has got to be Faye. She's the most talented by far.

Faye was born in Beijing and her family brought her down to Hong Kong, where her musical career begins. Like most singers from Hong Kong, she didn't write her own songs. We have a habit of covering Japanese and western songs with Chinese lyrics and make an album out of it. Faye first got famous covering songs like Karen White's Superwoman, The Cranberries' Dreams and Tori Amos' Silent All These Years under the name Shirley Wong in an effort from her record company to make her sound more western. These songs combined with some written by the local songwriters had made her quite popular in the early 90s.

In the meantime, she had a side acting career for some TV novella and she ended up in a film made famous by Quentin Tarantino named Chungking Express where she played a semi-stalker. (If you haven't seen this, it's a cool film to watch)

After establishing her success and her fanbase, her record company had giving her much freedom to experiment, she's changed her name back to Faye. She published an extremely experimental album called Fu Zao (Restless/Irritable) in 1996, writing most of the songs herself, and the songs are consisted of more sounds than words. The following albums have changed from Cantonese into Mandarin which is more of her native language and her success grew even further. The Japanese were so taken by her that she was contracted to sing the end title of Final Fantasy VIII "Eyes on Me" (Any gamers here?)

In her personal life, she was married to a singer to a popular rock band, gave birth to a daughter and later divorced, incidentally matching everything a fortune teller told her which she sang in a song years before her divorce. She was later involved with an upcoming singer more than a decade her junior, their affair became very public since Hong Kong is really not that big a place. They broke up and Faye married a Chinese film star. She's had stopped publishing records since 2003.

She's much beloved by the Chinese and she's got a huge gay following. My friend here has a tall glass bookshelves just for displaying her records.

Red Bean (1998)



New Tenant (2000)



Flower From Land Yonder (2000)



The things I've seen, had went off
The things disappeared, I've remembered
I'm standing at the corner of the sea, the edge of the sky
Heard the sprouting from the soil
I wait for the flowers to bloom again
So the fragrant would linger for the ages
There's no lighthouse at the land yonder
But I'll still be looking out
The sky may grew dark, my hair may turn white
But I'll be carrying my torch
When he comes, I'll tell myself
I'm not scared, I love him.

Beautiful Mistake (2003)



I also thought she looks like my mom, maybe she's just pretty. (Or maybe we all look alike... lol)