Canto Wrap #3: December 2021 - May 2022
the best Cantopop from per se's jangly pop songs to sedated reggaeton to Hong Kong idol pop
Hi, here’s this half of the year’s Canto Wrap, a series highlighting some of the best Cantopop singles from this half of the year. Check out the Spotify playlist with some new Cantopop from December to now and ten great Cantopop singles from the past six months:
Alan Po - “想再和你看煙花”
Alan Po originally composed “想再和你看煙花” (“I Want to Watch Fireworks with You Again”) as a Christmas track but its producer Jhen F and lyricist Yvette Wong take its nostalgic melody outside of the cozy familiarity. Jhen F reframes it into the past by dressing it up, inspired by the wave of 1980s Japanese pop, burying Po somewhere beneath its arrangement of band and synths. Meanwhile Wong burns a resolve to make things right, the “again” of its title already implies a second chance but its lyric, “ten seconds, let the fireworks give me an excuse,” finds Po resolutely decisive as he races toward that moment.
COLLAR - “Gotta Go!”
The eight members of COLLAR range in age from 19 to 36 and their group is Hong Kong’s attempt at the K-pop girl crush trend—their name is a reference to collarbone, what the group notes as a charming point for women, and to the shirt collar, for performances that aim to leave their audiences breathless. Their debut promises on the first but not so much on the second, its performance of girl crush is rote, complete with the awkwardly pieced together rap that slides into the smooth vocals but “Gotta Go!” is their first glimpse of something great. COLLAR present spring as a sweaty race, opening faster than they can keep up with. They pass around the melody like its nothing over its cheery instrumental,1 a set of commands thrown at you in the prechorus: “please live! gaze towards the sky! please believe!” It’s not perfect—the chorus veers a little too close to athleisure wear-commercial territory—but it remains captivating in its messiness thanks to the fittingly anxious tension that fights its opening line “every day is too boring, ordinary, and rough.”
see also: “Never-never land” // MiDNiGHT WAVE - “TO:NiGHT”
Edan Lui - “Elevator”
MIRROR are a case of right timing—their debut and formation in late 2018 was right around when K-pop was reaching greater attention on the global stage, the momentum of which probably buoyed MIRROR to be Hong Kong’s biggest idol group. However, unlike a K-pop group, MIRROR seems to follow closer to the Chinese peers, gaining attention through individual activities spreading across the entertainment scene. Variety show stars, including a competition series that built the group. Dramas, including the Hong Kong adaptation of the boys’ love manga Ossan’s Love, which became ViuTV’s highest-rated drama. In fact, the group’s attention was so high they had a diss track written about them. They’ve quickly positioned themselves at the centre of Hong Kong’s entertainment scene.
For all of that, MIRROR’s soloists tend to be far more interesting than their full-group tracks, which come off sounding like bad imitations of what K-pop idol groups are producing. The soloists are varied. Already this year, Anson Kong and Alton Wong teamed up for a house party, Ian Chan continues with smooth laidback R&B come-ons, and Jer Lau took his alt-rock sound in poppier directions. The best of the bunch however was Edan Lui’s “Elevator,” which from the dramatic performance of the music video to the actual song itself proves why he’s one of the most versatile members. His rap doesn’t force the track off its rhythm but keeps it moving with ease, even as Lui verges on the edge of a breakdown. “Elevator” drops it all off into a swaggering chorus, taking all its issues in stride: “if expectations don’t work, let’s just take it easy, okay?” It’s an anthem to celebrating the good and taking the bad in casual stride.
Emiko - “Trial”
Emiko keeps “Trial” slower than its biggest moments deserve but that’s just because she’s still exploring what works best. On her debut single, the singer plays with the arrangement, moving the focus around to satisfy her own curiosity: her drawling voice across its most pared-back moments; an electric guitar riff, smooth and sensual, then later repeated on the piano line; a house beat that swims in slow-motion.
Gigi Cheung - “PANDA”
Only a couple months after her debut EP, Gigi Cheung is out with a new single that expresses the same exhaustion that plagued WHY AM I HERE. Its beat repurposes its title into an autotuned beat, Cheung singing atop about the weight under her eyes. Fatigued and listless, she embraces that reality, allowing a gentle reggaeton beat to creep through the surroundings into the weariness of “PANDA.”
see also: “Frequency” // Sabrina Cheung - “剎那的”
Find WHY AM I HERE on streaming here: Apple Music // Spotify
per se - “竊竊詩”
On their third album character / character, the best Cantopop album of the year so far, Stephen Mok and Sandy Ip take fables and blow them up into vibrant retellings on jovial sets that hide the darkness carried by their characters. Take “杜松樹之鳥” (“The Juniper Tree”): Mok depicts the titular bird of the fable, flying through the town singing a song of hope, yet suddenly on the second chorus around, Ip joins as a second character, playing the tumultuous win, a foil to Mok’s hope. Ip’s vocal line counters Mok’s, where his fly, hers land, the pair acting as independent actors on the same set of glistening unrelenting guitar strum and cascading waterfalls. On the following “粉碎糖果屋” (“Hansel and Gretel”), per se invites another character by Serrini, a drunken premonition through its mist during its bridge. They play out with Mok’s jangly guitar playing
“竊竊詩” (“The Prophet”) removes itself from the storybook of character / character, instead, staring at a modern picture. Its arrangement is weighed by present-day despair, the breeziness is more so an emptiness while its instrumental holds solemnity in the place of the hopefulness of “The Juniper Tree.” Ip in her opening verse paints a picture of barrenness: “the trees are withered, the clouds are too dark.” Rather than weave multiple vocal lines, Mok seems to catch Ip’s melody when she falters at the chorus. “Stay and let the sound fill the surroundings / make an excuse to struggle,” he sings, trying to rouse his spirits as much as he does her own. There’s a much needed unity in the storytelling of “The Prophet” but that by its end heeds back to the two as separate characters. “At least keep playing your instrument,” Mok sings before Ip sounds off with a droll “but with a glass of good wine.”
Find character / character on streaming here: Apple Music // Spotify
Serrini - “樹”
Serrini settles for a moment on “樹” (“Tree”), trading the cynicism and melodrama of GWENDOLYN for hopeful introspection. She raises questions across “樹” about what the future holds for a relationship, uncertain in the gentle storm of its swelling strings.
Find NYNCH on streaming here: Apple Music // Spotify
TIAB - “RESERVE 2.0”
An update of TIAB’s “RESERVE (feat. AKIKO)” from two years ago shows where Hong Kong rap is headed: away from rap itself and towards speak-sung flow over rock-inflected arrangements. Away from the ballad-rap format, “RESERVE” allows itself to do more yet does it gradually, piecing together a run of synths and a hard drum beat under TIAB until producer SilverStrike gets “RESERVE 2.0” feeling enormous. In an instant, “I’m feeling bad” transforms from a shaky confession into a guttural scream demanding of change.
see also: LEWSZ - “LOVING YOU”
YPU Gaia - “What If”
Last year, Rich Kids Mob set themselves as one of the freshest acts in Hong Kong as a group of young rappers whose verses were parts rebellion and parts relief from their urban boredom. The rappers from YPU—short for Yung Players Universe—may don a similar style of rap, slathering their sing-speak flow with autotune but YPU are the indoor kids’ rap crew to Rich Kids Mob’s reckless adolescence. In the lonely confines of his four walls, Gaia remains stuck as a partner moves on, lost in reminiscing on the past and hanging onto ‘what if’s as if they could possibly become reality.
see also: Crazchanni - “The Truth (feat. 2NAUGHTYY)”
193 - “再次puppy love”
I’ll leave with this, a Cantopop synthwave version of Ava Max’s “So Am I,” that sees being the outsider not as a virtue but a peculiarity, its narrator hoping he can move closer to the ordinary teenage experience.
see also: ERROR - “愛情值日生”
Find the Canto Wrap and Mando Gap playlists on Spotify and me on Twitter here.
as many a youtube comment and remix mashup will note, “Gotta Go!” bears a lot of resemblance to YOASOBI’s “Racing into the Night” (thanks to Patrick St. Michel for catching what I missed)