Image can be everything in the music industry. Just ask Wang Lee-hom. As I wait in a hotel coffee shop for the American-born Taiwanese singer-songwriter, his record company’s publicist explains the 25-year-old has been sent back to his room. To shave.
“ I’m not very conscious about my looks, “ Wang says when he emerges.” They make me shave.”
It’s not the first time Wang has played the reluctant poster boy. He once turned up for a fashion magazine shoot dressed in bright yellow basketball shorts, snowy white socks and trainers. The shocked stylists had to scramble around the studio until they found clothes they were happy with.
Today, Wang wears a stylish, grey-blue woollen hat and a loose matching shirt. Once again, however, he doesn’t meet Sony Music’s standards and I am told no pictures will be allowed.
But Wang says he knows how to play the music industry’s game. He is obliged to attend awards ceremonies, even though he says the accolades “don’t mean anything” to him. He has to appear on TV game shows, even though he says “ they are not the best way to grab people’s attention.” Wang says the payoff for toeing the company line is his artistic freedom.
“ You can achieve your goals in different ways,” Wang says. “ I’m very lucky because the music company grants me authority over production. I am given a production budget. They let me disappear for a year [to make music] and work with whomever I want. It’s a luxury. I want to keep up a good relationship with the company. People there are friends and they respect me as a musician. So I’m not going to make life difficult.”
Wang is in town for the music awards presented by TVB and RTHK and for his first concert in the SAR. The show will also launch his world tour, which will take in the mainland, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, the United States and Canada.
The tour’s organisation has taken a year and Wang’s schedule songwriter for Taiwan at the Channel V Chinese Music Awards in Beijing 2000 and the best singer-songwriter and best producer in Malaysia’s Golden Melody Music Award last year. Most of his more successful works are love songs and he has been packaged as an idol for teenage girls.
“ I want to communicate with a lot of people and romantic love songs are the easiest for them to identify them with,” he says. “ They are natural and inspiring. It is true that people do like cheesy and romantic stuff, but I hope my fans like me for more than my looks. Fans have told me some of the songs really mean a lot to them. Some have even told me they were listening to my music when they met their boyfriends. So I’m happy that my music can enter their lives. You just have to be honest and sincere about your feelings.”
So do you have to be experienced in relationship in order to sing good love songs? Wang pauses and grins. “ I’m experienced, but not over-experienced. I’m not with anyone right now, but I’m working on it. It’s hard for me because I travel around. I don’t have a home. I move from one hotel to another.”
Last year saw a flood of singer-songwriters on the market. Taiwanese Jay Chou is perhaps the best example of record companies’ new push for multi-talented artists. Chou was something of a sensation, sweeping all the best-newcomer and singer-songwriter awards at ceremonies organised by TVB, Commercial Radio, RTHK and Metro Broadcast, accolades which put his name up with superstars such as Andy Lau-Tak-wah and Eason Chan Yik-shun. While giving around to Chou in the publicity stakes, Wang welcomes the competition. “ This is a absolutely a good thing,” he says. “ The sound of pop music comes from young composers so there should be more guys and girls producing music. And everyone’s style should be different.”
Wang has been singing in Mandarin for seven years. Though he insists he delivers his message through music and feels comfortable with the tongue, he says he would one day like to release an English-language album, with a less commercial sound, but adds that the plan is still under negotiation. “ I’m now ready to work on an English-language album. And it is my mother tongue,” Wang says. “ I have learnt how to produce an album as a concept, not merely putting a bunch of singles together, so I want to put these skills to use.”
from S.C.M.P
(12)
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