Dancing Queen

Landy Wen

There is no chance that you will forget who you are listening to. That is because Wen keeps spelling out her name L.A.N.D.Y.

In a nutshell, that spells out her problem. She is a versatile singer with a lightly husky voice but she needs more distinctive material in order to step out of the shadows of dancing divas such as Jolin Tsai, Elva Hsiao and Coco Lee.

Over nine years, Wen has moved from R&B and hip-hop to dance and is now a self-styled Dancing Queen. She dishes out attitude on Wide-Angle Beauty and D.I.S.C.O is a retro-sounding call to get your groove on.

But she can also take it slow on mid-tempo numbers such as Adia’s slinky Love Has No Right Or Wrong and Kenji Wu’s ballad I Believe It All.

Perhaps the constant shift in styles from album to album explains why it is hard to get a fix on her as a singer. The ever-changing hair and eye colours do not help either. It closes with Don’t Fall In Love With Me but somehow you get the feeling that it is the exact opposite of what Wen wants.

Love Has Always Been

Rachel Liang

Another week and yet another release by a One Million Star alum.

As they jostle for short attention spans and album sales, the ex-contestants have all had to decide how to differentiate themselves from one another.

Rachel Liang has chosen the safe-if-boring sweetie-pie route.

The second season’s runner-up titled her debut album Love Poem and her follow-up is Love Has Always Been. No prizes for guessing what she sings about.

Among the TV reality show’s female cohort, it is Lala Hsu who stands out for her willingness to try different approaches and keep things interesting.

The highlight of Liang’s romance-heavy disc is the title track for which local singer-songwriter Hagen Tan composed the memorable tune and contributed to the lyrics: “I know/My love/Has always been/Without you the tears can’t stop.”

To her credit, she mixes things up with the breezy Sixth Sense and the intriguingly titled Man-Biting Cat. And even that is about love: “My love is so troublesome/Like a man-biting cat that cannot be shaken off.”

One wonders if she would be a more interesting proposition if she shakes off that syrupy image.

review asian pop

All About Rynn

Rynn Lim

On first glance at the cover, one could be forgiven for thinking that MediaCorp rising star Dai Yangtian has branched out into singing.

It is hard to decide if this is a good or bad thing for Rynn Lim. On the one hand, the CD could turn more heads as a result of the physical resemblance.

On the other hand, is this really the way for the Malaysian singer-songwriter to get more attention after releasing three albums?

He is, after all, the winner of the Best New Artiste at the Golden Melody Awards in 2006.

All About Rynn is a retrospective of his past work including Kong Qiu Qian (Abandoned), Re-married and the novelty Malay/Mandarin duet Melodi with Sheila Majid. In the lyric sheet, Lim adds little anecdotes about the songs closest to his heart. Oddly enough, he chose to omit Working Girl, the lead single off his last album Homely Life (2008).

The collection also includes five new songs. From the lightly jaunty Within 7 Days to the ballad Gently, they are all pleasant but maybe not enough for people to start comparing Dai to him instead.

(ST)