The Answer Is... Stefanie Sun World Tour 2009
Singapore Indoor Stadium

Stefanie Sun’s much anticipated comeback concert after a two-year hiatus promised to deliver some answers about where she is headed in her career.
After 10 best-selling albums, the 30-year-old singer has cut herself loose from the record label system.
Visually, she seemed determined to do away with the girl-next-door image that has endeared her to so many fans over the years.
With Hong Kong’s William Chang, best known for his production and costume design work on auteur Wong Kar Wai’s films, as her image consultant, she treated the audience to a series of playful and whimsical get-ups.
She first appeared wearing a platinum blonde bob over a glittery golden outfit paired with knee-high boots. She was like a music-box ballerina twirling to Sleep-walk, from 2007’s Against The Light album.
For Love Starts From Zero, she drifted in on a conch-shaped platform suspended from the rigging. Blue butterflies adorned her head while she was cocooned in a dramatically shaped brown top.
But maybe Sun was not really comfortable in such costumes. She seemed rather subdued for much of the concert. Perhaps it was the killer heels that had her tottering around gingerly. Or it could be the fact that she had not performed on stage here in three years.
It was not until halfway through the 21/2-hour show that she finally cut loose on the rock number First Day and enjoyed herself.
Vocally, Sun proved she had the pipes for a demanding live concert, something she had not always been able to pull off in the past.
She was let down, however, by a head mike that made her sound muffled and over-amplified. The difference was apparent when she switched to a hand-held mike for some numbers.
The capacity crowd of 7,500 was simply happy to have their Sun shine again on stage as she delivered hit after hit from My Love to Green Light to new song Fool’s Kingdom. A group of fans even broke spontaneously into song to celebrate her birthday later this month.
For her special guest star, she invited local musician and Campus Superstar judge Peter Tan, whom she thanked for being a good teacher.
Things then took a strange turn when 17-year- old jazz singer Nathan Hartono, who had also studied under Tan, took the stage and threw off the entire vibe of the show.
Perhaps it was fitting for a concert of contradictions that the highlight of a Chinese pop gig came when she covered singer-songwriter Billy Joel’s And So It Goes. She sang the bittersweet lyrics like she truly meant them and it was the most touching moment of the night.
The performance brought back memories of the young girl who broke out with the distinctively unique voice on songs such as Cloudy Day and Love Document, which have already become classics.
It made one wonder if she would have fared better in a smaller and more intimate setting, stripped of all the extraneous details.The thing, though, is she is now a regional superstar whose status demands a mega stage.
So what next? The answer is not clear.
(ST)