''Sing and Play'' () is the sixth
Mandarin-language studio album (fifteenth overall) by Chinese singer
Faye Wong
Faye Wong ( zh, 王菲; pinyin: ''Wáng Fēi''; born 8 August 1969) is a Chinese singer-songwriter and actress. Early in her career, she briefly used the stage name Shirley Wong (). Born in Beijing, she moved to British Hong Kong at the age o ...
. It includes 10 tracks in Mandarin, with a bonus disc of 3
Cantonese
Cantonese is the traditional prestige variety of Yue Chinese, a Sinitic language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan language family. It originated in the city of Guangzhou (formerly known as Canton) and its surrounding Pearl River Delta. While th ...
tracks. It was released on October 2, 1998, in the
Greater China
In ethnogeography, "Greater China" is a loosely-defined term that refers to the region sharing cultural and economic ties with the Chinese people, often used by international enterprises or organisations in unofficial usage. The notion contains ...
region. On October 21, 1998, it was released in Japan.
[''Billboard''](_blank)
Faye Wong article by Steve McClure, February 6, 1999, page 51, "Global Music Pulse" column, edited by Dominic Pride Wong and
Alvin Leong served as the album's
executive producers
Executive producer (EP) is one of the top positions in the production of media. Depending on the medium, the executive producer may be concerned with management accounting or associated with legal issues (like copyrights or royalties). In films, ...
.
''Sing and Play'' was the first
C-pop
C-pop is an abbreviation for Chinese popular music (), a loosely defined musical genre by artists originating from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan (the Greater China region). This also includes countries where Sinitic languages, Chinese la ...
album to be recorded using
HDCD
High Definition Compatible Digital (HDCD) is a proprietary audio encode-decode process that claims to provide increased dynamic range over that of standard Compact Disc Digital Audio, while retaining backward compatibility with existing compact ...
technology. The overall style of the album is atmospheric and lively, making extensive use of techniques such as ''
bel canto
, )—with several similar constructions (, , , pronounced in English as )—is a term with several meanings that relate to Italian singing, and whose definitions have often been misunderstood. ''Bel canto'' was not only seen as a vocal technique ...
'',
vibrato
Vibrato (Italian language, Italian, from past participle of "wikt:vibrare, vibrare", to vibrate) is a musical effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch (music), pitch. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. ...
,
vocal fry and
breathy vocals.
Commercially, ''Sing and Play'' fared very well, with cumulative sales in Asia exceeding 2.5 million copies.
Background and composition
''Sing and Play'' was the first Chinese album recorded using
HDCD
High Definition Compatible Digital (HDCD) is a proprietary audio encode-decode process that claims to provide increased dynamic range over that of standard Compact Disc Digital Audio, while retaining backward compatibility with existing compact ...
techniques,
and the creative team still used partners such as
Albert Leung
Albert Leung Wai Man (, born 7 December 1961), better known by his pen name Lin Xi (), is a Hong Kong lyricist and writer. A prominent figure in Cantopop and Mandopop, he has written lyrics for nearly all major Hong Kong singers, with notable ...
, Adrian Chan, Xin Weili, and Jiang Zhiren. The conceptual positioning of the album is fanciful and unrestrained. Wong not only served as the producer of the album, she also once again composed four tracks: "Emotional Life", "Face", "Whimsical" and "Child".
Among them, the song "Face" is Wong's first work performed with a "
Bel canto
, )—with several similar constructions (, , , pronounced in English as )—is a term with several meanings that relate to Italian singing, and whose definitions have often been misunderstood. ''Bel canto'' was not only seen as a vocal technique ...
-like" singing method,
and "Child" is the first work that Wong and
Dou Wei
Dou Wei (born October 14, 1969) is a Chinese musician, singer-songwriter, composer and music producer. He is a representative figure in Chinese rock music. Alongside rock singers He Yong and Zhang Chu, they were collectively known as the "Pro ...
dedicated to their daughter
Leah Dou. The song is arranged by Dou Wei and was also the only work on the album that Wong personally wrote the lyrics for. Leah Dou, who could not speak yet, also tried to talk for the first time in the song.
The three Cantonese songs in the album were all composed by prolific lyricist Albert Leung, who also re-composed the three Mandarin songs in the album into Cantonese. Leung is responsible for almost all of the lyrics in ''Sing and Play''. Among them, numbers such as "Repay" and "Love Commandment" use parallelism to describe love. When Leung wrote the song "Red Beans", his inspiration came from the scene where the lovelorn heroine in the Japanese drama ''
Love Generation'' boiled red beans. Before the red beans are cooked, the heroine was thinking of breaking up. In this way, the
dorama
, also called or J-drama, are television programs that are a staple of Television in Japan, Japanese television and are broadcast daily.
Format
All major Television networks, TV networks in Japan produce a variety of Drama (genre), drama serie ...
's plot worked its way into the song's lyric: "I haven't boiled the red beans into a lingering wound for you". Jim Lau himself admires Wong's voice very much. When he composed the music for "Red Beans", he imagined how Wong would sing based on her voice, so the song was composed in less than a few minutes, breaking his fastest songwriting record.
Pan Xieqing, the composer who collaborated with Wong for the first time in the album, created two works, "Give Up Halfway" and "Fly". Among them, "Fly" pays tribute to
Chang Yu-sheng's work.
The song "Our Lord", which was lyricized by
Wyman Wong, was written by
Zhang Yadong
Zhang Yadong ( zh, s=张亚东, p=Zhāng Yàdōng, born in Shanxi, China, 11 March 1969) is one of China's best-known record producers, known as "the golden producer".
His mother was a Shanxi#Music, Shanxi Opera singer. He learned the cello from ...
for
Xu Wei
Xu Wei (, 1521–1593), also known as Qingteng Shanren (), was a Chinese painter, playwright, poet, and tea master during the Ming dynasty. Cihai: Page 802.Barnhart: Page 232.
Life
Xu's courtesy names were Wenqing (文清) and then later Wenc ...
when he was working on an album for Wong. It was later included in the album and Xu Wei was paid more than 10,000 yuan in royalties.
Title and artwork
The album title is usually translated as ''Sing and Play'' in English sources.
[Stan Jeffries, ''Encyclopedia of world pop music, 1980-2001'' 2003 p224. "In January 1998, Wong won the favorite female category at Taiwan's Channel V awards. As part of her new goal of winning wider recognition, in the same year she released Sing and Play. The album included some Wong compositions and introduced more ballads to her canon, as most of her previous releases had been unerringly jaunty pop numbers. She then undertook a tour of Japan that lasted for six months. Her nomadic lifestyle throughout this period made her one of the most widely recognized people in East Asia (Asiaweek magazine included her in a list of "50 people you should know in China"), but it began to have an effect on her private life."]
Others refer to the album as ''Song Tour'' (遊 can mean ''tour''), ''Scenic Tour''
which was the name of Wong's 1998–1999 concert tour,
''Love Life'',
or ''Song Play''.
The album cover is a "sunburned" headshot of Wong designed by Thomas Chan, while the album booklet features photos that are inspired by movies like
The Fifth Element
''The Fifth Element'' () is a 1997 English-language French science-fiction action film conceived and directed by Luc Besson, and co-written by Besson and Robert Mark Kamen. It stars Bruce Willis, Milla Jovovich, Gary Oldman, Ian Holm, an ...
and
Jurassic Park
''Jurassic Park'', later referred to as ''Jurassic World'', is an American science fiction media franchise created by Michael Crichton, centered on a disastrous attempt to create a theme park of De-extinction#Cloning, cloned dinosaurs. It bega ...
. Wong's sunburned makeup look on the cover also triggered a wave of imitations in the entertainment industry.
Reception
The album debuted at number three, respectively, in Hong Kong on the week of October 4 and in Malaysia on the week of October 13, 1998. It peaked at number one in Malaysia on the week of October 20, 1998.
[''Billboard''](_blank)
"Hits of the World", page 51 It reached number two in Hong Kong on the week of October 11, 1998.
''Billboard'' Asia bureau chief, Steve McClure, placed it in number seven of his top ten list of 1999 Asian albums.
[''Billboard''](_blank)
"Critics' Choice: Steve McClure", page YE-67, December 25, 1999
Wong's first "Bel Canto-like" performance on the song "Face" was well received, and her producer status was recognized for the first time, which led her to be shortlisted for the Taiwan Golden Melody Award for Best Record Producer at the
10th Golden Melody Awards.
The album was noted for some of its ballads, in contrast to the pop songs which had provided most of Wong's hits around that time.
[ "Red Beans", "Face" and "Love Commandments" have been popular songs of the album.][
As of February 1999, the album sold almost 2,500,000 copies worldwide, including imports.] It was rereleased in Japan on March 3, 1999, with the bonus track, " Eyes on Me". The Japanese release reached No. 38 on the Oricon Albums Chart
The Oricon Albums Chart is the Japanese music industry standard albums popularity chart issued daily, weekly, monthly and yearly by Oricon. Oricon originally published LP, CT, Cartridge and CD charts prior to the establishment of the Oricon A ...
and charted for 12 weeks.
Track listing
;Notes
Charts
Weekly charts
Year-end charts
Certifications and sales
References
{{Authority control
1998 albums
EMI Records albums
Faye Wong albums
Mandopop albums