Never Said Goodbye

Eric Suen

The Things We Do For Love

Joanna Wang

Hong Kong’s Eric Suen burst onto the Mandopop scene as a fresh-faced 20-year-old back in 1993, with the monster hit Nice To Know You. Then, after a whirlwind five years, the singer-songwriter burnt out and left without bidding the public goodbye.

Having released last year’s wellreceived Cantonese album, Man In The Mirror, Suen is ready for his Mandopop comeback.

He does not address his absence directly, though he could well be addressing his fans on tracks such as You And I: “You and I, a new beginning of my life/You let me feel love’s excitement, never be parted from you my whole life.”

And on love song The Best Arrangement, he sings: “Goodbye yesterday’s boy, I must live in the now, the past is gone and will never come around again/If you’re afraid of failure, you won’t be able to live an exciting life.”

The album offers a preponderance of ballads such as the title track. Given that his voice is not that distinctive, I would have preferred more uptempo numbers such as the uplifting Count On Me.

Taiwan’s Joanna Wang, on the other hand, has a beautifully husky voice that leaves a stamp on whatever she sings.

And so we have another album of covers from her: The Things We Do For Love is a double-disc album of covers, after 2009’s two-disc Joanna & Wang Ruo-lin, which featured oldies on one CD and original material on another. Wang Ruo-lin, by the way, is her Mandarin name.

On disc one here, the inclusion of two versions of three songs – Carole King’s You’ve Got A Friend, Cat Stevens’ Wild World and Oingo Boingo’s Stay – feels like padding. Also, it would have been nice to hear her tackling more of the lesser-known material such as 10cc’s The Things We Do For Love.

The second disc of Mandarin material fares better. The late Anita Mui’s Intimate Lover is a beautifully languid showcase for Wang. And she does a tremulously tender take on Sarah Chen’s A Lifetime Of Waiting.

Hopefully, it will not be a lifetime of waiting before Wang releases her next album of original material.

(ST)