Favourite 100 Mandopop Singles of 2021: #50-1
the best Mandopop of the year, including songs about love, protest, and escape from waa wei, Air League, Cyndi Wang, and more
50. Shallow Levée - “Blessing (feat. HUSH)”
Shallow Levée’s Tsai Yi-Ling mentions weddings as a theme of Endless Playlist and you can hear the way years of history and the future unfold across her gentle eyes. Shallow Levée shake the tears off, its raw reverie blooming as the instrumental rolls forward and HUSH joins on vocals. “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry,” Tsai sings before delivering one of the year’s most comforting lines: “you are born worthy of happiness.”
49. Meng Huiyuan - “Say Something”
The finger-plucked notes gradually trace things out before the song gets there—Meng already knows before she drawls “is there something you need to tell me?” but still chooses to leave you the grace to tell her yourself.
48. TNT - “Is It Just Me?”
Adolescent boyband TNT confess a crush and become perhaps the first artist to have both a guzheng and 8-bit Mario coin blips on the same song.
47. Sabrina Lo - “Yes Man (feat. SJIN)”
SJIN’s talkbox distortion expresses annoyed exhaustion, mirroring Lo’s frustration on the low-key R&B of “Yes Man” as she handles a man who can’t even choose between noodles and fried rice.
46. Sophie Chen - “Cabin Fever”
The dull thrum of the acoustic guitar might create an emptiness that stretches out for miles, but Chen still manages glimmers of hope, still sings about chasing happiness in the defeated isolation of “Cabin Fever”.
45. Kimberley Chen - “always be my always”
“Birthdays and hallways and downstairs cafes”—Kimberley wants the tiny details forever. “always be my always” is eternal, a wedding standard replete with an organ and a line like “accidentally became the most beautiful accident of my life” just itches to be used as a vow.
44. HUR - “Weirdo (feat. G5SH)”
HUR find themselves suspended in the cosmos of G5SH’s production, yearning for someone else’s attention, lost in the blinding lights of its massive surges.
43. Yo Lee - “Go Back to Bed”
“Go Back to Bed” is domestic bliss, a sketch of two lovers who stayed up to learn each other. After the crash that wakes you, it coaxes you back under the covers of its lush arrangement.
42. Billionhappy - “party party party! (feat. CHALKY WONG)”
“If partying is a crime then happiness is wrong too,” Billionhappy sings over the relentless club beat of “party party party!” WONG interrupts like he’s just waking up, the toll of last night’s party pausing it for only a second before the pair return to rave.
41. K!ddingboi - “Dear, Rosie!”
On its melodic emo-rap, K!ddingboi remains smooth and breathless in the face of an impending slow descent into nothingness.
40. Eve Ai - “Forgetful”
In one of the best music videos of the year, you watch an older woman attempt to engage with her partner’s younger third only to find she’s just been chasing a younger version of herself. “Forgetful” is Ai’s warning as she attempts to cut through the strings and urge others not to lose themselves in a past version, after all, who other than you can remember what it looked like back then?
39. Jocelyn 9.4.0 - “Baby Blue”
Jocelyn takes it in stride as she bakes advice about almost being the other woman into “Baby Blue,” rolling frustration back into the flat synths as she draws boundaries.
38. Yisa Yu - “A SEAT”
“A SEAT” frames a relationship slowly extinguishing, Yu’s voice tracing a descending melody on the ballad while the strings try to revive what’s left. But a relationship that ends can also restart, a chance Yu ponders at its end: “do you often come here too?”
37. Wang Hui-Chu - “24 Hours”
Everydaze’s mellow production gives “24 Hours” the sparkle and shimmer, but Wang provides it with the grounding to sell its mantra: “twenty-four hours a day, don’t think too much and live a good life.”
36. jiafeng - “AI NI AI DAO”
When jiafeng tries to find the words to express how long he’ll love you, he unravels into madness, the words looping together. His mind bends into what he calls “deconstructed pop,” cycling through genres like jukebox sampler, enraged metal, sparkling pop, finally landing a sublime saxophone solo.
35. PANTHEPACK - “Pull Up”
The quartet’s exaggerated self-mythologizing flipped from inflated expectations to a carnival ride’s worth of fun as each member let loose: Jackson Wang threw self-references while Karencici winked with the line “and I know you want it sugar baby.”
34. Osean - “Midori”
Drums stabilize “Midori,” just like the partner Osean lets play his revolving moon, the pair sinking into an intoxicated haze and letting all details other than a simple kiss float away.
33. YELLOW - “Paradigm (feat. Vivian Hsu)”
The world of high fashion in fast motion as YELLOW and Hsu constantly pose on top of the runway’s ricocheting echoes to capture their best angles.
32. Theo Zhu - “Sink”
Zhu leaves breathy come-ons in the enigmatic beat of “Sink,” letting you get lost in its house of noise, from squelchy beats and knocking to whistles and booming bass.
31. Young Jack - “Attraction”
“Bet you’re my vibe,” Young Jack raps, smoothly sliding across the dancefloor of “Attraction” with cheap pick-up lines and dizzying pace.
30. Gen Neo - “Hold Back”
Simple in its drive, “Hold Back” is like two strings on their last thread. Gen Neo puts his effort into getting you to cross the line, enticing you across with smooth soulful R&B.
29. Tan Weiwei - “Xiao Juan”
“小娟 (花名)” or “Jane Doe (Alias)” is a towering protest track, a statement that demands all attention. Lyricist Yin Yue didn’t shy away from referencing the real cases of domestic violence that were treated to a media circus of events, hoping that Tan’s voice will force you to pay attention. As big as “Xiao Juan” is, the loudest part is the exhaustion under its layers of vocal production that build Tan into the dominant collective, the many voices of women tired of fearing they’ll be the next to be buried under the name 小娟.
28. Tai Yi - “歌名待定”
“歌名待定” (“Title Pending”) is hyperpop pulled from an older catalogue, using glitchy samples of traditional Chinese instruments to slink through darkness rather than use nostalgia to create brightness.
27. TRASH - “Change”
With lyrics that reflect constant growth, TRASH return with pop-punk that’s not just louder, but livelier and brighter. Marz23’s chorus is still an act of resistance, but only against the person he once was, attempting to keep growing better each day.
26. Su Ruiqi - “Seize the Light”
Before taking the Girls Planet 999 stage, Su had already been through it: eliminated in two Produce-style series and a member of the inactive Chic Chili. It’s remarkable then how much hope “Seize the Light” conveyed—choral vocals and booms that sounded like shooting stars and how she danced across its sky with light nimble raps and a huge voice that soared across its expanse.
25. Control T - “It Ain’t Sunset, My Dear”
“It ain’t sunset yet, I haven’t completely given up,” the pair sing, fighting to keep a relationship burning. Even with it sounding like the sun ready to set—warm, gentle, and inevitable—Control T don’t resign themselves to fate, building bigger and brighter, doing everything to prevent this from being their last beautiful shared scene.
24. KWin - “Vida”
Lurking in shadows, “Vida” was the most sensual of the three ONER solo singles, culminating in a breathy piercing call. “Our love appears right but is actually wrong,” KWin sings. But when he sings about being your little secret, does it matter?
23. Chen Jingfei - “Tonight”
Disguised as an act of seduction, “Tonight” begs a lover to give a little bit more. Like a dying flame, Chen puts all her hopes in one last question, wondering if you’ll give it all for one final night.
22. Shadow Project - “Love Song 2020”
On the wistful emo-rap love song, the trio spends their time desperately wondering where it all went wrong, apologizing for things they don’t understand and hoping you’ll come back.
21. Lai Meiyun - “Go, Wonderland!”
Cresting on power-pop guitars, “Go, Wonderland!” is like racing full-speed down a mountain hand-in-hand with Lai, breathless as she chases her next adventure.
20. Dizzy Dizzo - “Wifey”
Dizzy Dizzo is completely capable, an independent “straight killer” who makes her own money. But she’s also the “boss wifey,” a status she treats like the highest honour. For her, the idea of “the better half” is to be taken literally, and being the wifey is deserving of celebration, which she does on “Wifey,” acting as a whirlwind of force, straightening anything and everything around her. Rapping at the top, reminding strangers to wear a mask well, and leaving her haters in the garbage—Dizzy Dizzo does it all and revels in it, and “Wifey” celebrates it like a freshly uncorked bottle of champagne.
19. Shi Shi - “Realer Love (feat. sunkis)”
A question lingers over Shi Shi and sunkis as the pair tries to move on. Love still exists, their voices intertwining in beautiful harmony, and yet mutual pain keeps them from coming back. In the loneliness of a dinner and movie for one, Shi Shi seems to question it, wondering if really is better to be apart, if being alone beats whatever rut they’ve each landed in, while sunkis watches from afar, hoping she’s happy. They dwell on the hypothetical but still try to push forward, hoping that there is happiness for each of them in the future, that there really is such a thing as a realer love.
18. 9m88 & DJ Mitsu the Beats - “Tell Me”
On the year’s most living single, “Tell Me” itself seems to breathe, expanding and compressing as it breathes and sighs. Co-produced alongside Japanese producer DJ Mitsu the Beats, every one of 9m88’s movements is met with a knowing response by its production, like how the keys seem to trawl ahead of her, catching her wherever she might land. Like yourself, 9m88 doesn’t have all the answers, but she still leaves space, not just for synthetic warbles, but also for you in case there’s anything you want to tell her. “Just don’t give up on yourself, babe can you promise me?” she asks, handing you whatever bit of grace she has.
17. Lil Ghost - “Don’t Call Me Da Vinci (Punk Version)”
The original “Don’t Call Me Da Vinci” was a lovely emo-rap song, a song about hoping that if you were to be with someone, they would see you as you. “Don’t call me Da Vinci, let me sing my own melody,” Lil Ghost sang, like the idea of living up to Da Vinci was be too much pressure. On the punk version, Lil Ghost wants to surpass it. It’s still a piece about his own individuality, but this time, it’s a rebellion against standards stacked against him. Look at him still for exactly who he is, but recognize that Lil Ghost can do everything, that when he wants to sing his own melody, it could be anything.
16. Jo’s Moving Day - “Clouds”
“Clouds” was the dreamiest that Jo’s Moving Day, the Guangzhou shoegaze/dream-pop outfit, ever got. Male vocalist Lao Wu formed a dense mass in its middle, letting the dark clouds gather in its sky while female vocalist Rui Biqiu bookended its pieces, her voice like streaks of light through dissipating clouds while the arrangement was so fluffy it felt like every piece was pulled gently from its density.
15. oaeen - “I’m weird”
“I’m weird” lives up to its title. There were hints of what it could be from the opening, with rubbery squeaks across its sludgy instruments and an operatic falsetto up to its pre-chorus, but it truly embraces its weirdness after spacing out into something mellow on the bridge. On its final legs, every member of oaeen seems to play to their own whim, “I’m weird” becoming discordant and unbalanced as it soaks in its sludge, only to come back together with a cheeky layered “I’m weird.”
14. Tia Ray - “HARMONY”
Tia Ray doesn’t hold back in flirtation. Like any great R&B star, she knows when to lay the confidence on thick, riddling lines about being born to shine in the spotlight, but also knows when to be subtle, trailing off with a suggestive “but honestly, boy I think I need some…” She thrives on the interplay of “HARMONY” and when a deeper voice calls “let’s do some harmony,” she responds in step with a doubled “what kind?” It’s Tia Ray flexing every single one of her muscles, highlighted by brass riffs and decadent guitar lines, as she sings breathy falsettos and raspy coos to keep you trailing along till its end.
13. Air League - “Anti-Anxiety Guide”
Pop-rock group Air League took aim at involution, resisting the nation’s largest source of despair, a never-ending cycle of working yourself to the bone just so you can compete with those around you. “I don’t need to be passive to the service selling anxiety / I won’t participate in this involution business,” Tian Hongjie sings, warning of the toll comparing yourself to others can take and ensuring you make time to rest. The band rejects any overtime to have some fun, slinging protests with punchy guitar melodies and beating the ugly green monster over the head.
12. Accusefive - “Where I Lost Us”
“Where I Lost Us” is like being back in the city, every reminder of the person you once were with the person you once loved flooding back to you. The mundane pleasant ones first as Pan Yun-an sings softly over its keys, but building quickly to something wrong, collapsing into stillness when he sings “and I love you, but love can’t hold us up,” its harmony and keys backing out. The warmth of the city is still there, something “Where I Lost Us” will remind you of but will never let you recapture. It builds again before you leave for good, forcing you to replay every moment you lost someone in a city you can never again call home.
11. Tomggg & phritz - “Love Ride (feat. Shelhiel)”
The pandemic opened up a lot of opportunities for cross-national collaboration as more turned online, and for the first single by global-minded platform UNLILRICE, Japanese producers Tomggg and phritz teamed up with Malaysian-born Shelhiel for a trip through new romance. Listening to “Love Ride” is a dazed trip through the park, with Shelhiel speeding through the colours of its production to give you everything, from flowers to balloons to letters in the sky. Through all its cuteness, replete with adorable sound-effects courtesy of its producers and Shelhiel cooing “uwu,” he waits innocently at its end for your answer: “don’t make me wait too long, do you love me?”
10. INTO1 - “INTO1”
Despite the eleven members of INTO1 establishing their own identities over the course of Produce Camp 2021, INTO1 used their debut stage to demonstrate their abilities as one perfect unit. It went a bit more basic than what each was capable of: simple choreography for cohesion rather than skill and a practically interchangeable line distribution to provide each member with limited but equal opportunity. But they became a collective with “I’m brave enough and not ordinary” transforming into a unison call of “we are INTO1” and under the confetti and streamers, “INTO1” felt like a unified mission statement.
9. ADEN - “多久才懂妳的心”
ADEN plays the protagonist in “多久才懂妳的心” (“How Long Until I Understand Your Heart”), riding his bike around town, waiting for the day you forgive him. He plays the kind of lead you can sympathize with, singing not about what you need, but rather what he lacks, hoping he can grow alongside you. He slides up and down registers in that raspy croon, while the liquid instrumental occasionally gives way to smokey guitar solos. “How many nights will it take to capture your love?” he asks, wondering exactly what he did wrong, begging for you to give him one more chance to make things right.
8. Lexie Liu - “ALGTR”
Synthwave reached every corner of East Asia, but its weirdest adaptation was with Lexie Liu, who reshaped it to suit her dystopian vision on “ALGTR.” There’s still the buoyant rush of the synths, but they’ve been reconfigured with a rock edge, a survival instinct meshed to her future. Liu cruises across while leaving you in its bumpiness, taunting you throughout, waving goodbye as she jumps up the melody to another world and rolling the word “man” in jest at the end of her jeering “you macho man.” If its body is deserted wastelands, it glows on its bridge with heavenly choral chants before Liu slides back, leaving you for another world with one final derisive taunt.
7. SOWUT - “JOY”
In “JOY,” SOWUT steams over in a boiler room. Diskonnected’s techno production clangs with the sound of steel on steel, but the entire thing sounds like it’s seconds away from blowing. As it rings through the track, SOWUT’s raps grow from a whisper to a yell, quickly doubling down from a slow and deliberately sarcastic pace to bragging fast about his own originality. When you think it’s over, he returns bigger and even more heated, its mechanical echoes and shadowy sighs constantly bouncing around the cramped space. “Joke’s on you,” he raps, a quick and dirty “fuck you” to anyone who thought he would’ve disappeared by now.
6. Heat Sketch - “Dear Crooked / Mountain Asleep”
Was it intentional that Heat Sketch chose the word crooked, “歪” (wāi), to make “Dear Crooked” sound like a torrent of questioning ‘whys?’ Perhaps, but it seemed intentional that “Dear Crooked” built a relationship ready to collapse at the slightest shift and would later come crashing down at the end of “Mountain Asleep.” Compared to last year’s debut, Heat Sketch’s double-single is fuller and brighter—drums hit harder and guitar riffs are bigger—its voices deceptively positive, masking the resentment of two lovers who would rather tilt their faces away than eat, speak, or even step with one another. It leads to “Mountain Asleep,” which feigns another day of pretending before one of the lovers slips away before dawn, the unstable legs of its relationship crashing down into the thrash of Heat Sketch’s overdrive.
5. waa wei - “My Type (feat. Shadow Project)”
In the coffee shop atmosphere of “My Type,” tensions rise as waa wei lets her attraction float in the air. It remains only a fantasy as she sings “can’t help peeking at you, but I won’t speak my mind,” but every stolen glance reveals something even more endearing to her. While she remains in the background, Shadow Project are happy to act on that attraction, cutting through the tension as they drop charming ad-libs, relaxed triplets, and pickups lines romantic in their sincerity. waa wei harmonizes at another table, sighing as she watches with lovelorn gaze, nothing but the sweet aroma of infatuation in the air.
4. Drogas - “How Can I? (feat. Losty)”
“How can I find an excuse to keep you?” Drogas wails under the layer of plastic that blankets him and Losty. The pair can’t escape it, drowning under the autotune that covers each, the melody that ends in a layer of static, even the cold irony of the clinical “purchase your tracks today” that comes at the worst moments like right after Drogas stutters “pain and torture.” They chase love knowing that they’ve likely confused something else for it, Losty singing “I thought you are my destiny” moments before begging for it once more: “I need your love ASAP.” In their endless torment, “How Can I?” sounds like pure agony—Drogas’ voice at its lowest end sounds like gasps for air, tears only held back by autotune on the highest. “You left a scar that can never be erased” comes like a muffled scream. While Drogas and Losty never break through that layer of production, the depth of their pain manages to shoot right through.
3. Julia Wu - “better off without you (feat. E.SO)”
“better off without you” was the single instance of the deteriorating relationship of 2622 where Julia Wu doesn’t view a breakup as a sort of tragedy, but as freedom, regaining confidence as she starts to view it as a brief detour, a moment wasted. On its G-funk lurch, she cycles through a range of emotions, writing off confusion, pantomiming disgust, and feigning sadness before passing it all off as a sarcastic joke, brushing off the hurt without dismissing that it actually happened. E.SO similarly meets an ex with dismissal, rapping on the bridge “sincere thanks for my loss, your leaving made my life perfect once again.” The pair harmonize on the chorus, joyously celebrating the end, shoving it directly in their faces. For all her hurt, Wu gets the last laugh at the end, trilling with satisfaction as the empty space an ex used to possess now just feels like a bigger bed.
2. Jiao Maiqi - “3189”
I spent so much of this year just trying to consume as much media as possible, more often as a distraction from all the things I’d eventually confront at 2 AM when sleep evaded me. And all of it—wanting to get drunk, wanting to go somewhere, feeling behind at every turn—was refracted through the dreamworld of “3189.” Maybe because “3189” brought everything: nursery rhymes into wishes, future plans into imagined drama scenarios, work into sleepy exhaustion. And Jiao Maiqi did it in every voice: casually spoken, sung in his dreamy airy voice, robotically distorted, you name it.
It linked together in weird ways. Jiao describes it as “a weird song for weird people.” The middle section wove around lambs, at one point adapting “Mary Had a Little Lamb” to the melody of “London Bridge.” He ad-libbed responses to himself and joked in alternate voices. So much goes on that you might miss what he says about himself, like the innocence of the imagined “in my dreams the fox won’t eat the lambs,” or the mischief to the following line: “the lamb might not be kind-hearted.” The dramatic monologue isn’t a confession to another, but a demand that he gets to see the splendour of life sometime soon.
Jiao lets himself run free. When sleep evaded him, he jumped on the galloping clip-clop beat and let his mind wander. He let the music run wherever it wanted as well, alien blips, rock re-reinterpretations, and the melody drifting out into space when he wasn’t watching. All of its disorder was matched with wide-eyed innocence, the belief that things could and would be better. In “3189,” Jiao Maiqi created a world that could be whatever you wanted it to be, whether you needed an escape or a beautiful innocent dream.
1. Diana Wang - “Make You Feel”
Uncertainty hung over our heads this year like a dark cloud. It was a long winding road, obscured by fog, the unknown of when this would end and what exactly it would look like when it finally, or perhaps ever, did. Uncertainty rears its head all over “Make You Feel,” but most clearly in the pre-chorus—where Diana Wang had settled immediately into her place beside you on the opening verse, she rushes here. The digital drums that felt like the normal sway of nature suddenly became violently turbulent. Slow one second, fast the next, it was a windstorm amidst its magnificent scenery.
“The mountain road is winding, the forest is full of colours,” she sang at its opening, letting “Make You Feel” unfold with a vibrancy. But her voice was soft as if she knew it could all blow over in a minute. Wang seems to pick up on this sense of mortality to romance, suddenly switching in the chorus from “make you feel love” to “loved,” already envisioning a future where she can only worry about you in the past tense. There’s still kindness to it, that if it indeed ever does need to go, it’ll go gently and you’ll remember only the fact that she loved you. She fights against the clamour of the drums, with breathy coos, thrilling runs, and soft sighs. She’s warm and gentle. She makes it clear that she has so much love to give to you.
Slow then fast. Starts, stops, restarts and false stops. “Make You Feel” never remains stagnant for too long nor ever really wants to end, constantly shifting scenes and seasons, flashes of her across all of them holding onto you as best as she can. It was afternoons on the beach then stargazing under the trees, hands clasped in the sun then kisses in the moonlight. She paints love as something gentle, a kindness that saves you from the storm, but also as passionate, rushes of desire. “Make You Feel” sprawls on and in one of its false endings, she decides never to let go. She flips it on the true coda, and buried in the mass, sings “baby you make me feel in love.” Diana Wang makes love a shelter from the turbulence, a safety net to withstand any uncertainty, and somewhere in its quiet fade-out, decides that that kind of love deserves forever.
Thanks for reading! You can find playlists on Youtube and Spotify.1
Find the latest Canto Wrap and Mando Gap playlists on Spotify and me on Twitter here.
To preserve order, the Spotify playlist only includes Heat Sketch’s “Dear Crooked” (#3). Also, Billionhappy’s “party party party! (feat. CHALKY WONG)” (#44), IXFORM’s “So Hot” (#62), and sis’ “Last Song” (#77) aren’t on Spotify, so I’ve replaced them with some English singles from Mandarin-speaking regions: Jasmine Sokko’s “25,” Pinkray’s “Parallel Universe,” and Chen Xueran’s “Long Day.”