Wake Up Dreaming
Jacky Cheung
It is the Cantopop God of Songs’ first new Mandarin album in seven years and the accompanying fanfare has been tremendous.
The first single, Use The Rest Of My Life To Love, is a track that plays to his strengths.
Lush and dramatic, with a cascading chorus, it fits the bill as the ballad his fans have long been waiting for (the opening phrase “Use how much time, keep waiting, for one love” might well be describing how they felt).
Indeed, Wake Up Dreaming on the whole is not about breaking new ground but very much about giving people what they want – which would be mainstream ballads such as Time Has Tears.
While there is the perky I’ve Fallen In Live With You about the simple joys of falling in love, it sounds a little too teeny-bopper for Cheung at this point.
Elsewhere, he professes his passion for singing.
He declares on I Just Want To Sing: “I just want to sing, until I bust my throat one day.”
And again on the title track, he professes: “Only in my dreams, not afraid to shout till my throat is ragged.”
We get it, he really, really wants to sing.
Surely, it is unbecoming for his voice to actually break during the phrase.
One expects more subtlety from the God of Songs.
Between Wake Up Dreaming and his previous Mandarin album, 2007’s By Your Side, he released the excellent Cantonese disc, Private Corner (2010).
There, he immersed himself fully in the jazz idiom and proved that he could swing it in that field.
It was a far more interesting proposition than his new Mandarin effort, which ends with the track Not Bad.
Should Cheung not be reaching for more than that?
(ST)