#16: March 2022
the best Mandopop of the month from Limi's confident 'Bad Babe' to breezy singer-songwriter musings on loneliness to an airtight indie-rock song
Part of Wang Leehom’s public persona was tied to the image of an ideal idol: Wang was marketed as traditionally handsome, well-educated, and charitable. Perhaps that’s what made his ex-wife, Li Jinglei, accusing him of infidelity, soliciting prostitution, and verbal abuse so shocking. While his first label marketed him as a top-quality idol for his ability to compose and produce music, they also capitalized on his appearance, with early album covers featuring Wang like the boy-next-door. As he aged, his persona matured and his latest, and perhaps final, release was a charity single for ALS titled “Forever Your Dad,” a saccharine attempt to capitalize on that family-oriented status.
The consequences of Li’s allegations were swift: Wang was dropped as a spokesperson for Infiniti only two days after being announced, with several other endorsement deals being thrown out along with it; he was also cut from the solo ending theme of the drama Great Victory, changed from a duet to a solo by Tan Weiwei. After trading accusations back and forth through Instagram and media reports, Wang eventually announced his temporary withdrawal from the entertainment system.
How temporary is this withdrawal?1 The closest thing to a precedent is David Tao’s scandal after a gossip website broke the news that the singer had allegedly cheated on his wife. But the difference in the way the two cases played out in the media is likely to have a larger impact on Wang’s career than on Tao’s. Where Tao and his wife continued to be married eight years after the scandal, Wang and Li traded insults and further accusations through pages of Instagram slides and various tabloid outlets. There’s very little forgiveness from any party in this case. Also worth noting is that despite the forgiveness on part of Tao’s wife, his career has remained inactive since the scandal—it remains a dark shadow over his rare appearances in tabloids. It seems unlikely that Wang Leehom will ever really be active in the entertainment scene again.
Wang Leehom’s music was part of the wave of the changing sound of Mandopop in the late 1990s and early 2000s. On his first release with Sony Entertainment, the 1998 Revolution, he became one of the first Mandopop artists to be so heavily influenced by R&B, later becoming the youngest artist to win the Golden Melody Award for Best Mandarin Male Singer. In the years following, R&B became more popular in Mandopop, through artists like David Tao and Elva Hsiao. Wang was also instrumental in the rising popularity of 中国风 (Chinese-style music). On 2005’s Heroes of Earth, he incorporated pieces of traditional Chinese music, such as the elements of Beijing opera in "Flower Field Mistake,” similar to Jay Chou, merging them with elements of R&B and hip-hop. But 2004’s Shangri-La, the first album of what he called his “Chinked-out” style was even more interesting. Shangri-La didn’t limit itself to an understanding of Chinese music solely as traditional, but used field recordings taken from tribes in Taiwan, Tibet, and Mongolia, and you can hear them in “In the Depths of the Bamboo Forest” or “At That Faraway Place.” Shangri-La managed to make Chinese-pop music that retained its Chinese identity without relying on the need for the traditional, without making Chinese music itself solely a thing of the past. His influence will probably be overshadowed by the neverending popularity of Jay Chou, but a survey of just three of Wang’s albums demonstrates his influence on R&B and Chinese-style music throughout a decade.
It’s almost expected at this point that China will end up blacklisting Wang from the entertainment scene—even Taiwan seems to be leading in the same direction. Whether Li’s accusations are true or false hardly matters for Wang’s career. The damage is done and Wang likely won’t be a sympathetic party if he ever does return to the entertainment scene. In the end, it’s sad to see one of the figures who shaped modern Mandopop see an end to their career by such a horrid scandal.
This month we’ve got two albums, Limi’s Bad Babe and Zooey Wonder’s Nomadland, sophomore albums that build off their debuts in different ways. Also, singles from Sandee Chan, Christine Fan, Priscilla Abby, and Jumbo. You can check out the Spotify playlist here.
Albums
Limi - Bad Babe
“I got a Plan B in my pocket / also got some money in my wallet,” Limi’s singer Li sings on the opener of Bad Babe, drawing out the lines so they fit her meter and rhyme scheme. There’s some handwaving as to what that plan B actually means, Li seems mostly just excited with the drama of the situation, giddy with the prospect of dumping the first one and jumping to the next. The rest of the track chases after that luxury, trading fake affection for material possessions in the rush of dating as a game.
Limi described their debut One of Two as a sort of audio shojo manga, Japanese comics targeted toward teen female audiences. Tracks like “If My Nights Are Your Days” and “Monsoon Love” struggled to voice their inner feelings, yet Limi’s second album eschews the starry-eyed romanticism for confidence, the shyness of their debut replaced with a sharp, seductive lilt. On its title track, Li lies in wait, “don’t you wanna take a sip of me?” she whispers, positioning herself as the prize without ever really offering.
Producer Mi also makes a leap forward from the placid arrangements of One of Two. Bad Babe’s production is like a fizzy glass of champagne, classy and bubbly, stylishly pairing with the high luxury of Li’s newfound confidence. It’s soft and pillowy when Li wants to seduce on the flirtatious “I Don’t Wanna,” a saxophone riff somewhere in the background. Later, he makes it bring out the danger of “Peekaboo,” rendering synths sharper to cut alongside Li’s voice, a gun cocked and shot in the darkness. He cushions intimacy and eases those blows Li rehashes in front of the mirror. And when Li needs a bout of confidence he sharpens tracks to provide her with some necessary support. Mi’s best moment might be on “Thank You”: the rolling guitar might sound too desperate for contact but Mi instantly flips the production into a dimly-lit private show as Li counts the ten things she hates about an ex.
On the front half of Bad Babe, Limi are occupied with the thrill. The title track has Li’s melodies doubling over Mi’s bubbly production, fizzing out of their container. She flits between being “a bad babe” and “your bad babe,” pivoting out of reach from anything real. But the back half of Bad Babe features some complexity to Li’s portrayal of its character. On “Alright,” she remains vindictive, taunting a man with questions like “am I still your golden girl while you fool around with that bitch?” and “can you do her right?” but still can’t stray away from her own attraction, painfully reminding herself of the most blissfully mundane acts of romance. “I’m a bad babe” is worn as a mask, hoping the thrill of luxury and Mi’s effervescent production are enough to keep her from slipping back into that lovestruck failure.
Find it on streaming here: Apple Music // Spotify
Singles: “Plan B”
Zooey Wonder - Nomadland
Zooey Wonder’s voice drifts like a breeze in search of a tether. It’s fluttering uncertainty and sometimes it feels like it takes everything just for her to keep up, often switching into gentle wordless murmurs and coos as the melodies float ahead of her. Wonder’s desire for home typically arises as the want for another like on the pensive “柔軟的刺蝟” (“Gentle Hedgehog”)" where she hums: “no one knows how much I want to be hugged and linger by your side.”
But that desire to be held is met with indecision and insecurity, a conflict fleshed out in “Me Time,” where Wonder swings back and forth between the advantages of being alone versus having another to share her life with. She almost successfully convinces herself that she wholeheartedly prefers the freedom of being alone (“alone I have a lot of space / alone I am free to eat whatever”), yet still in her me-time lingers on the ache of wanting to laze and cuddle on the couch with another.
Nomadland is most ambitious when Wonder actually attempts to get outside this me-time comfort zone, when she sets her sights on getting closer to someone. On “冰山” (“Iceberg”) she coos: “hope I can let you see clearly / how transparent my heart is for you.” It sinks momentarily on the first chorus into minor dissonance but later when spurred again on the final chorus, its production uplifts her, the submerged electric guitar colouring the track. Moments of “恰如其分的自尊” (“Appropriate Level of Self-Esteem”) feel massive as Wonder attempts to accept that she may be worth intimacy.
Occasionally, it suffers from Wonder’s shyness, Nomadland feeling adrift without ever really travelling anywhere. Its production feels too simplistic to offer any clues about its setting. The casually plucked guitar on the pleasant but flat “Dare to Be Happy” sounds like a gentle breeze through air-drying laundry rather than an exciting destination. The questions of belonging want for more of a sense of adventure, more of the drums that drive the opener “Give It Up” or ambient noise that could place her surroundings. “時間的河流” (“River of Time”) offers a pulsing synth line and a sturdy kick drum but never gives enough push to properly suggest Wonder’s questions are worth asking.
Wonder comes back to the idea of having me-time on “客廳裡的烏雲” (“Dark Clouds in the Living Room”). It feels comfortable yet restless, itching to discover something new as Wonder lingers on what’s missing, comfortable with the solitude but also questioning what’s missing. Nomadland sways between freedom and that desire to belong to something or someone and in the end, Wonder seems to settle on the latter—“I’ll find my way home,” she sings with her eyes shut, seemingly imagining something or someone to go back to.
Find it on streaming here: Apple Music // Spotify
Singles: “Me Time” // “Nomadland” // “Dare to Be Happy”
Singles
Christine Fan - “Self-edited Diary”
Christine Fan starts, not so much with the tragic, but with the mundanely bad: the mournful hum of the washing machine, the malfunctioning air conditioner. Its day feels like a streak of gray, the music a state of disarray as the lyrics only roughly align on top of the melancholic arrangement. But on the chorus, the synths are like splashes of colour. “Let me repair the bad,” she repeats, “let me enjoy more,” tearing out the darkest pages. It goes bigger on the final chorus, splitting more with the bigger drums. “Repairing will be annoying but I love this labour,” Fan sings. “Self-edited Diary” never loses its greyness, but gradually tears out parts of it, a prospect that seems to rejuvenate Fan and allow her to shrug off any incoming problems.
Priscilla Abby - “Don’t Make Me Like You Too Much”
It’s so easy to rush into a crush. To get pulled too far forward, the way Priscilla Abby does when she wonders “are you busy? what are you up?” before she stops herself, instantly apologetic for her own enthusiasm. “Don’t Make Me Like You Too Much” holds off on the rush, dragging back the tempo, exhibiting caution the same way Abby tries to do. But a crush has her surrender and despite its pace, its synthwave influences make it feel charged by its infatuation. Abby has confessions slipping out of her mouth before she’s even realized, endearing in how clumsy they are: “to me, you’re one hundred percent chocolate / from the bottom of my heart, I truly fell for you.”
Jumbo - “The Dropout”
Pop-punk-inspired “The Dropout” is similarly too slow to feel the rush of rebellion, so when Jumbo calls to “throw everything away” it doesn’t sound spontaneous but something built out of slowly demanding pressure. There’s something more exciting to him about that prospect, freedom when he stands up to announce at the end: “I don’t fear anything.”
Sandee Chan - “Bondage”
“Bondage” pivots from some of the experimentation that led to “Pain Addict,” the lead single for Sandee Chan’s upcoming thirteenth Mandarin solo studio album. The woozy electronic atmosphere of “Pain Addict” glimmered until its chorus, bursting as the word “pain” was evoked with such satisfaction that it could easily be mistaken for pleasure. For “Bondage,” producer Jason Choi pivots away from the electronic atmosphere winding everything around a tight arrangement of militant drums and sawtooth strings so that Chan’s voice feels locked in one position.
It looks for a release that never comes—no bursting lights, no screams of pleasure. Instead, at the top, it invokes a quote from French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit: “Hell is other people.” Bound by the perceptions of others, Chan never finds the end to the judgment of the eyes of others. She combats it through what she teaches you on “Bondage,” the single directive she offers in that same forcefully unwavering voice, made unexpected and enticing through its filter. “Look in the mirror and say, ‘master, I love you,’” Chan commands. It doesn’t arrive in “Bondage” as some remarkable revelation but instead, an affirmation that Sandee Chan constantly drills, perhaps surprising at first, but after its repetition, a lesson she’s taken to overcome the eyes, one she hopes you’ll make good use of as well.
Find the latest Canto Wrap and Mando Gap playlists on Spotify and me on Twitter here.
It’s important not to fall into the trap of believing that Wang’s career was over by his age alone. While Wang and other artists like Jay Chou and Jolin Tsai have certainly slowed down their releases in recent years, most remain somewhat active. Two of the singles are by artists older than Wang and continue to push their sounds in more experimental directions than they’ve seen in years.