Tanya Chua Just Say So Concert
Esplanade Concert Hall
Last Friday
Local singer-songwriter Tanya Chua returned to her roots at her Friday gig. Her English music roots, that is.
She may be a three-time Golden Melody Award winner for Best Mandarin Female Singer but she started out writing and recording in English, and her first album was the English-language Bored (1997).
Just Say So, the title of her show, is also the title of her fourth and latest English release (2011).
On disc, the songs such as Let’s Get Together, Just Say So, Carousel, Key To Happiness and Friends chart a trajectory of a relationship.
However, that arc was lost in a live show setting. And too many songs fell into a similar mid- tempo groove that did not exactly propel the show along.
It was a good thing that her lightly husky pipes were in pretty good shape and her take on these very personal songs seemed to be more deeply felt than when she delves into Mandopop.
She also sang quite a few covers, including a take on Rihanna’s Umbrella and Lady Gaga’s Poker Face, which was welcomed by the crowd. It had also been a high point in her (mostly) Mandarin concert at the Singapore Indoor Stadium last year.
There was also a memorable version of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, which started off slow and haunting before the guitars kicked in and Chua rocked out briefly.
It would have been nice to have had more movement on stage though. Chua, wearing a red hat and a white and black vest-shirt over black slacks and often with guitar in hand, remained in one spot throughout the night.
The technical glitches did not help either, and problems with her sound equipment meant a few false starts over the course of the show.
At one point, she said: “I did not mean for this to be a rehearsal.”
The organisers later released a statement saying that, for some unknown reason, the pre-calibrated settings went haywire during the gig.
It cannot have been easy performing under such circumstances but Chua held on.
Clearly, it meant a lot for the Taiwan-based singer to perform in English on home territory, in front of her family and friends. She said: “It’s like coming home to my parents with a report card kind of feeling.”
She also told the story of how she started writing music and also got the audience to sing Happy Birthday to her nine-year-old niece Eden.
As a special treat, she also included some songs she did not sing on the Taiwan and Hong Kong legs of this all-English tour. Perfect Daughter was a raw and honest look at the complicated relationship between mother and child.
It was also a welcome surprise to hear It’s Your Chance, the English version of the track she had composed and which was sung by Mandopop queen Faye Wong as Wrong Number.
While an English cover of her own song made sense, the large number of covers she sang meant that she did not get to dig deep enough into her own roots.
This had seemed like the perfect opportunity to perform early English material such as You Sorry Ass!! as well as Luck and Drive! off Luck (1999).
But it was not till late in the two-hour-long set that she busted out her harmonica and sang My Colour TV Set. It was her first single and had made it to No. 2 on local radio. At the end of that lively number, she exclaimed: “It feels so good to sing that song again.”
It was good to hear it again as well, judging from the response of the 1,300-strong audience.
The show could have had more of such moments.
(ST)