Back to the music.

As a Faye Wong fan, I have to get a few complaints out of the way first. Her songs always seem to sit in an awkward place. People with more mainstream tastes often dismiss her as someone merely pretending to be refined, and by extension treat her fans as people showing off their supposed taste. That kind of reaction is really just a matter of preference. Different people like different kinds of music; there is no need to turn that into a moral judgment. What bothers me more is another kind of listener: the self-appointed serious and professional crowd, the ones who speak as if they are authorities on Western avant-garde music and love to accuse Faye Wong of simply borrowing the ideas and techniques of European and American musicians. Björk is the name that comes up most often, along with the Cranberries.

I never really listened to the Cranberries, so I cannot say much there. I did listen to one Björk song once, specifically because people kept saying Faye was copying her. Honestly, I did not hear much resemblance. Still, if the experts insist they are similar, I can let them have that point for the moment. My question is: so what if they are?

People talk about Europe and America as if they are some paradise of alternative music, as though experimental artists dominate everyday listening there. That has never matched my impression. Whether it is Björk or the Cranberries, they were never the biggest mainstream names abroad, at least not in the United States. The biggest stars there were Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera; before them Celine Dion and the Backstreet Boys; earlier still Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, and Michael Jackson. It was never the experimental musicians who defined the center of popular taste. They were not fully embraced by the mainstream either.

So if Faye Wong really did absorb some of those ideas and bring them into the Chinese-speaking pop world, and if she did it in a way that reached a large audience, then that is something those critics should be happy about rather than scandalized by. It was good for Mandopop and Cantopop alike. I am not saying Chinese pop would have stayed closed off without her, but she did make a major contribution. Of course it would be even better if she wrote more of her own material. But the lack of songwriting cannot, by itself, disqualify her as a great singer. You would not call Maggie Cheung a bad actress because she cannot write screenplays.

Another common line of criticism exaggerates Dou Wei’s role to the point where it sounds as if 99 percent of Faye Wong’s success came from him. I do not deny his importance at all. Especially from 1993 to 1996, his writing and musical influence clearly helped her a great deal. But a great album is usually the result of many people working together. A songwriter matters, yes, but so does the performer who gives the songs life. Dou Wei released his own music too, yet his public impact was nowhere near hers. Most people know him first as Faye Wong’s former husband. That says something from the other side about what she brought to the table.

Now that the complaining is over, here is what I actually hear in her music. This is not a professional assessment. I am just an ordinary fan trying to describe my own reactions. There is nothing technical here, only the sort of conversation you might have with friends after a meal.

The Cinepoly years

I came to Faye Wong fairly late. I really started following her in 1997, when she joined EMI. Everything before that I had to catch up on afterward. From the pre-1997 period, the albums I knew best were Restless, Sky, and Faye’s Moments, her Teresa Teng covers album.

Restless

A lot of people say Faye Wong’s golden age is already behind her, and when they say that they usually mean Restless. Privately, I suspect many of the people repeating this have never actually listened carefully to the whole album. It is the kind of record only someone truly interested in Faye Wong would sit through in full, and those listeners are often less likely to speak in such easy clichés. The irony is that when Restless first came out, it did not receive anything like this level of universal praise, and its sales were poor. To break from expectations takes courage, and it rarely gets rewarded immediately.

Still, it is a remarkable album. I had never heard anything quite like it before. Half the songs seem built from murmurs, humming, breath, and fragments, yet the result is unexpectedly pleasing. It is also one of her most replayable records. I still remember going through battery after battery on a cassette copy of it. The quality is very even across the whole album, and at a very high level. My favorites are “Wuchang,” “Restless,” “Where,” and “Decadence.” Listening to Restless feels like wandering alone through open countryside, absentmindedly singing bits of passing joy, irritation, tenderness, and emptiness, exactly the kind of drifting mood suggested by the title track.

Even getting hold of the album took effort. It was very hard to find in mainland China. I searched for a long time without success. Later, two friends learned how much I wanted it and supposedly combed through nearly every audio shop in the city before finally finding a single cassette tucked away in some corner. They gave it to me as a birthday present. I later passed it on to another Faye Wong fan who was moving abroad, and after that I was never able to replace it.

Sky

I once read that the version of Faye Wong most beloved by urban white-collar listeners was the short-haired, playful figure from Sky. It is another highly praised album, and unlike Restless, it was both critically and commercially successful from the beginning. To be honest, though, it is not the style I love most from her. There are many very slow songs, sung in a lingering, almost dragging way. The feeling is like eating a very sweet candy: delightful at first, but after several bites it becomes too rich.

The songs I prefer here are the cleaner, more direct ones: “Shadow,” “Pledge,” “Cold War,” and the title track “Sky.” One moment especially worth mentioning is the opening of “Reserve,” where there is no accompaniment at first, only Faye Wong’s clear voice descending as if from above. For anyone who loves the sound of her voice itself, that opening is pure pleasure.

Faye’s Moments

This Teresa Teng tribute album consists of old love songs, simple on the surface, but in Faye Wong’s versions they acquire her characteristic coolness and distance. One line I especially love is hearing her sing, in that detached way, “If I were a stream of clear water, I would never turn back.” When I later heard Teresa Teng’s original versions, so full of softness and longing, I was struck by how much a singer’s personal temperament can alter the emotional color of a song.

The tracks I would especially recommend are “If I’m for Real,” “Cold Lake Green,” and “Smoke Rises Again.” That last one feels extremely difficult to sing, with phrase after phrase climbing higher until, by the end, it sounds as though Faye is tightening her throat to reach the emotional summit.

Other songs from before 1997

Most of the rest of her earlier work I heard through all kinds of greatest-hits collections, official and unofficial alike. Those compilations naturally favored the more popular songs: “I’m Willing,” “No Regrets,” “Fragile Woman,” and so on. My first reaction was almost surprise: so Faye Wong sings songs like these too.

Some more extreme fans may dislike that side of her and consider it too conventional. I am not that pure. I think these songs are beautiful as well. I first heard “Fragile Woman” in the Hong Kong drama The Greed of Man. It played during Sister Ling’s death scene, and the song was used almost in full, which is unusual for a television insert. Maybe the director also felt it captured the mood perfectly.

The EMI years

Faye Wong 97

Starting with this album, I heard every new Faye Wong release as soon as it came out, compilations aside. I remember one critic saying that on this record she “deepened the styling and lightened the voice.” That sounds about right. In terms of vocal flourishes and technical display, it is plainer than both the albums before and after it. But maybe that is exactly why I feel it contains the most beautiful melodies of her five EMI studio albums.

The murmured simplicity of “You’re the One Who’s Happy” actually demands a great deal from the singer. “Bored” may be the song that touches Faye Wong fans most directly. The bouncing, playful Faye in that track may well represent the life many people secretly want for themselves. A friend of mine who also loves Faye especially admired “Playing with Fire,” especially the gentle opening lines about not caring how many embraces others offer, only wanting one smile from the person she longs for. As for me, my favorite moment is in “I Don’t Want It This Way,” the cautious little phrase that amounts to: if I withdraw—only if. It sounds both reluctant and helpless.

Sing and Play

In my mind, Faye Wong’s very best period is not one album but the two records from 1998 and 1999, plus one single.

Thanks to “Meet in 1998,” she became enormously popular in mainland China that year, and Sing and Play, released in that wave of attention, feels to me like the peak of her album-making as a whole. The title, the visual styling, and most importantly the songs themselves all work at a very high level.

The opening track, “Emotional Life,” is my favorite. The arrangement is dazzling, and Faye’s control over the song gives it a constant sense of movement and surprise. Every time I hear it, I feel almost visually overwhelmed. “Giving Up Halfway” is another perfect example of what she can do as an interpreter. I once saw someone say that it is a song which might have sounded flat in another singer’s hands, but Faye turns it into something full of shifts and contours.

“Red Bean” is probably her most widely loved song among the general public. For some reason, whenever I hear it, I picture a girl in red standing with her back to me in the snow, immersed in dreams and happiness that once belonged to her. “You” and “Can’t Wake Up” are both excellent too.

And then there is “Face,” which deserves special mention. Even within Faye Wong’s catalogue, it stands out as unusual. I had never heard anyone sing a pop song with something close to a bel canto approach. It felt fresh, strange, and beautiful. The lyrics are also increasingly abstract in that very distinctive way: “Breathing is your face, your lines spreading out, an ever-changing coastline, growing the saddest daffodils.” Every time I hear it, I get the odd sensation of an ant crawling across my face. That may sound ridiculous, but I mean it as praise.

Eyes on Me

This was Faye Wong’s theme song for Final Fantasy VIII. Some people dislike it because her English pronunciation is not especially idiomatic. But if you set aside strict judgments about English delivery, she performs it wonderfully. The graceful melody and her airy voice feel perfectly suited to the world of Final Fantasy.

Sometimes I imagine that if I ever got the chance to travel into space, this is the song I would bring with me. Picture standing in front of a giant window, looking at the blue Earth from above, while behind you Faye sings softly, “my last night here with you, maybe yes, maybe no.” It would be impossibly cool.

Only Love Strangers

At the end of my thoughts on Sing and Play, I mentioned the image of an ant. On Only Love Strangers, the ant actually arrives. In the noisy opening of “Blooming,” the very first line caught me immediately: every ant has eyes and a nose; whether it is beautiful, whether there is even the slightest deviation. It is a line that sounds like nonsense and wisdom at the same time. Beneath the racket is a familiar Faye Wong attitude: it does not matter, none of it really matters.

“Hypnotize” feels more like a triumph of lyric writing than anything else, with its dreamlike counting creating exactly the effect the title promises. The title track, “Only Love Strangers,” is my favorite from the album’s first half, especially the way the music at the end seems to move from one ear to the other. Songs with simple melodies like that depend heavily on the quality of the voice and the steadiness of the singing. With a voice as clear but not especially thick as Faye’s, the middle register can easily become unstable, yet she handles songs of this kind very well.

My favorite track on side B is “Wonderful,” even though it was just an advertising song. It reminds me of the fairy-like Faye from Chungking Express, drifting around the city in search of whatever wonders might be possible. The album maintains the standard of Sing and Play and unfolds with real momentum. What it lacks, compared to that earlier record, is warmth. The cool distance returns. Maybe the mood of the artist had changed.

寓言 (Fable)

Some people say this album should really be divided into two halves, and Faye herself seemed at least somewhat willing to let that reading stand. That alone points to the record’s biggest weakness: it lacks the continuity and integrated feel of the two albums before it.

Still, if you ignore the abstract discussion around concept albums and just listen song by song, there are many strong tracks. I especially like the first three songs and the final two. “Cambrian Period” has a vocal quality that faintly recalls “Face.” “New Tenant” and “Chanel” feel almost like two versions of the same urban mood, and to me they are among the most metropolitan songs she ever recorded. The album closes with “Book of Laughter and Forgetting” and the Cantonese “To My Own Love Letter,” both melodic, accessible, and naturally appealing to a broad audience.

Faye Wong 2001

To be blunt, I think this is the weakest album of her EMI period. From what I understand, Fable did not perform as expected, and since this was also the last album under that phase of her career, many of the songs seem to continue earlier styles without matching the quality of the previous records that explored similar territory. The better tracks, in my view, are “Color Blind” and “One Way Road.”

The Sony period

To Love

After more than two years of quiet, Faye Wong finally returned with a new album. To Love reportedly received a strong response, and it also went on to win a major Golden Melody Award after years without one, which sparked a fresh wave of discussion around her work. That renewed attention is part of what made me want to write about her.

Personally, though, while To Love is a clear improvement over Faye Wong 2001, I still do not think it reaches the level of Sing and Play or Only Love Strangers. I am not especially fond of the title track “To Love.” It seems to lose some of the ease and detachment that are so central to her appeal. Songs with a mild rock edge often depend heavily on the lyrics, and her own songwriting still feels as if it needs a little more development.

The songs I like best are “Empty City,” “Passenger,” “Zuan Mu,” and “Beautiful Mistake.” The writing and composition on those are all first-rate. I still do not quite understand why none of them became the main promotional focus.

Someone once said that Faye Wong’s golden age had already passed. If the comment is aimed only at these most recent two albums, I cannot say it is completely unreasonable. But I would rather believe that, just as she was gathering strength when she first entered the EMI era in 1997, she may simply be in another period of accumulation. Maybe the next year would bring another surprise.