#37: Real Singers
on Na Ying's 1999 album, Totally Giving Up, an album of desperate torch songs that cements her as one of China's best vocalists
January and February are typically quiet with New Years celebrations. There wasn’t really anything released last month that I wanted to write about, so instead I went back twenty five years and wrote about Na Ying’s final album of the century. I still wrote about singles from last month, from Winnie Hsin, Tarcy Su, and the Guangdong collective CHILAYGUN.
Na Ying - Totally Giving Up
Na Ying’s biggest single, “Conquer,” is the work of a devastating force of a vocalist. She cuts to the chorus quickly and belts it like a revelation: “just like this, I was conquered by you / drank the poison you hid / my story has come to a close / my love and hate have been buried.” For a woman too proud to wave a white flag, “Conquer” is a concession that sounds impressive and defiant, yet it’s the quieter moment plea on the bridge that draws me in: “if you pass by my grave / can you put your hands together and offer me a blessing?” It’s a moment that’ll be eclipsed by everything else the song offers—the grandiose wail of the electric guitar, the final chorus where she howls through a backing choir—yet she extends her arm, not in surrender, but to verbalize one final appeal for compassion in the aftermath.
Na Ying’s fourth album, Totally Giving Up, seems to exist wholly in the space of this bridge and for the highlight single “Just Like a Dream,” songwriter John Yuan seems to turn the painful, spontaneous request made into full song. Yuan—whose career started in the earlier part of the decade as part of folk-pop duo 凡人二重唱 (Ordinary Person Duet) with producer Mo Fan, before transitioning into a more predominant songwriter role—would later reveal he wrote “Conquer” about ex-girlfriend, Diane Chen—both of whom contribute dignified break-up tracks to Totally Giving Up. Where “Conquer” feels perhaps more masculine, more headstrong, “Just Like a Dream” ebbs and flows in softer motions: “if I had known that this would be like a dream / I wouldn’t put all my love in the same place / I can forgive your preposterousness / but the preposterous thing is that I can’t forget,” Na sings, her voice soft and clear as she shifts between tender and regretful. It’s still proud, but it sounds like the passion has burnt through everything. Nothing remains but the warm ring of a delicately picked guitar filling the track’s desolate chamber.
Love, in the eyes of Na Ying, is an all-in venture. Yet her songs have never better conveyed the idea of loving someone as having handed yourself over to another; the emptiness of “Just Like a Dream” sounds like both will be left with nothing. Totally Giving Up is about when love is one-sided, the pain of being the only one to do so. Across its incendiary tracks, she sings about having given everything. Opener “Totally Giving Up,” written by Chen, finds every move matched. Tears with tears, pain with pain. Both parties are exhausted and when there’s nothing left, Na Ying’s voice is vehement yet restrained, her passion burning her alive: “simply retreat and throw yourself in the fire / burn your heart and hurt and hurt until you can’t feel anything.”
Totally Giving Up is perhaps Na Ying’s quietest album; its realizations are hushed, its declarations are tender. What was impressive about her as a vocalist is traded for more emotive performances: the laboured way she sings about on “Just Like a Dream,” as if fighting against her instincts; the hint of wildness behind her runs on “White Silk Thread,” that truly convey the desperation—these are relatively understated for Na Ying. But another part is the production of Singaporean songwriters, Peter and Paul Lee—the twin brothers’ work with Stefanie Sun would later help modernize xinyao, the sparse yet neighbourly Mandarin folk songs borne from Singapore. Her previous songs overly sentimental with schmaltzy arrangements comprised of twinkly eighties pastiche—though the country ballad “醒时做梦” (“Wake Up Dreaming”), about being so infatuated it consumes you, remains one of her best—but these arrangements are similarly understated; you could perhaps even describe them as boring. That’s the point: they’re plain yet stirring, drawing the emotion out of Na Ying. The instrumentation becomes enlivened only when bridging between her vocal verses, like the strings that arrive on “On My Own,” like the roaring sound of your surroundings in the silence during a confession. Later you’ll hear them swell under her as if they’re motivating the performer, pushing her voice brighter, pushing her to make her ache arrive with more desperate longing.
You don’t hear albums like this anymore, the ones filled with torch songs by such adept vocalists. Despite its restraint, Totally Giving Up is another showcase of Na Ying as a vocalist; she’s already demonstrated her capacity to make surrender sound defiant and this is her making the ache of loneliness sound so relatably devastating. Having real singers dominate feels like a bygone era, one cemented by those old enough to remember it. Zhang Yadong, a close collaborator of Faye Wong—Na Ying commented that she wrote “Bet Is Bet” for the singer; you can hear Wong’s influence in the way she sings on the track—lamented the lack of talent in today’s singers, about what would once require a single take needing several just to get something usable. Harsh, but it gets at how the idea of the “real singer” has been out of fashion for years, that the production can paint over the flaws. Just look at what’s left for Na Ying’s career, a bunch of stints judging singers on imitations of The Voice and a pointless appearance on the second season of Sisters Who Make Waves, a show whose only purpose is a sort of: “remember her? remember when singers could sing?” By the turn of the century, the position of the vocalist seemed to be subsumed by authentic singer-songwriters and perky, malleable performers marketed for teeny-bopper audiences. So emotive and rich, Totally Giving Up feels like a reminder of Na Ying as one of the last real singers.
Listen here: Apple Music // Spotify
Singles: “Totally Giving Up” // “White Silk Thread” // “Just Like a Dream” // “Bet Is Bet”
Winnie Hsin - “Sorrow’s Forecast”
Winnie Hsin doesn’t let emotions loom large on “Sorrow’s Forecast,” her voice a delicate hush even as she whispers about the obsessive past rattling in her brain. The synths plink and burble like droplets of rain, but she seeks no shelter, bounding through in an agile skip. On the song’s music video, Hsin dances like a grandma in the courtyard, while the words appear on screen like a “call now” advertisement on the shopping channel, a chipper smile plastered on her face. Against the warning signs, it feels instructional.
CHILAYGUN - “Truth or Dare Pt. 2 (feat. MILKGUN & FIREBLOOD)”
The two members of Guangdong-based collective CHILAYGUN like things a little old-school. Their come-ons have an innocent sheen: “your appearance in the crowd is dazzling / this many girls, but you’re the entire place’s focal point,” goes the leading rap—he’s confident, but it carries the awkward nervousness of a high-school dance. Rapping in Mandarin and Cantonese over the beat, it’s a pop confection sweet enough to make you hope it’ll last a little longer. Maybe not forever—that clumsiness can only be endearing for so long—but just enough that the pitched-up sample will bring a smile when you hear it in the future.
see also: “Parallel (feat. Summy & OneFive)”
Tarcy Su - “A-HA”
A big part of aging is about learning to be content with where you’ve been and what you’re left with: “actually, I think this ain’t so bad / no matter what, I have too much insight,” Tarcy Su sings, brushing off the gloom. Yet on “A-HA,” at over thirty years into her career, Su is still learning to embrace the new. With a team of Ann Bai composing, David Ke’s lyrics, and Howe Chen on production, “A-HA” takes that familiar strum into a brighter and more lackadaisical direction as it embraces the lo-fi jangle of indie surf. Su takes stock of who she is now: mature enough to realize she’s capable of self-improvement, satisfied being a little lazy and a little out of control, and most important, smart enough to listen to herself. “I’m temporarily digressing, emotions come first, rationality passes / my feelings have no direction and more places to go,” she sings on the song’s tail, backed with all the sunny disposition to support the notion. Even now, it’s about the places you can go.
Extra Listening
Ella Chen from S.H.E has her second album coming on March 31 after nine years. Here’s the title track. Like the singers above, it shrugs off negativity, hers set to something more tropical.
Find the latest Canto Wrap and Mando Gap playlists on Spotify and me on Twitter here.