Sing and Play is quite groundbreaking in recording since it was the first C-Pop album to be recorded using HDCD technology. The overall style of the album is atmospheric and lively, making extensive use of techniques such as Bel canto, vibrato, vocal fry and breathy vocals.[4] Commercially, Sing and Play fared very well with cumulative sales in Asia for the record exceeding 2.5 million copies.[5]
Creative background
Sing and Play was the first Chinese album recorded using HDCD techniques,[4] and the creative team still used partners such as Albert Leung, Adrian Chan, Xin Weili, and Jiang Zhiren. The conceptual positioning of the album is fanciful and unrestrained. Wong not only served as the producer of the album, she also once again composed four tracks: "Emotional Life", "Face", "Whimsical" and "Child".[3] Among them, the song "Face" is Wong's first work performed with a "Bel canto-like" singing method,[5] and "Child" is the first work that Wong and Dou Wei dedicated to their daughter Leah Dou. The song is arranged by Dou Wei and was also the only work on the album that Wong personally wrote the lyrics for. Leah Dou, who could not speak yet, also tried to talk for the first time in the song.
The three Cantonese songs in the album were all composed by prolific lyricist Albert Leung, who also re-composed the three Mandarin songs in the album into Cantonese. Leung is responsible for almost all of the lyrics in Sing and Play. Among them, numbers such as "Repay" and "Love Commandment" use parallelism to describe love.[6] When Leung wrote the song "Red Beans", his inspiration came from the scene where the lovelorn heroine in the Japanese drama Love Generation boiled red beans. Before the red beans are cooked, the heroine was thinking of breaking up. In this way, the dorama's plot worked its way into the song's lyric: "I haven't boiled the red beans into a lingering wound for you".[7] Jim Lau himself admires Wong's voice very much. When he composed the music for "Red Beans", he imagined how Wong would sing based on her voice, so the song was composed in less than a few minutes, breaking his fastest songwriting record.[8]
Pan Xieqing, the composer who collaborated with Wong for the first time in the album, created two works, "Give Up Halfway" and "Fly". Among them, "Fly" pays tribute to Chang Yu-sheng's work.[3] The song "Our Lord", which was lyricized by Wyman Wong, was written by Zhang Yadong for Xu Wei when he was working on an album for Wong.[9] It was later included in the album and Xu Wei was paid more than 10,000 yuan in royalties.[10]
Title and artwork
The album title is usually translated as Sing and Play in English sources.[11][12][13]
Others refer to the album as Song Tour[14] (遊 can mean tour), Scenic Tour[15][16] which was the name of Wong's 1998–1999 concert tour,
Love Life,[17]
or Song Play.[18]
The album cover is a "sunburned" headshot of Wong designed by Thomas Chan, while the album booklet features photos that are inspired by movies like The Fifth Element and Jurassic Park. Wong's sunburned makeup look on the cover also triggered a wave of imitations in the entertainment industry.
Reception
The album debuted at number three, respectively, in Hong Kong on the week of October 4 and in Malaysia on the week of October 13, 1998.[19] It peaked at number one in Malaysia on the week of October 20, 1998.[20] It reached number two in Hong Kong on the week of October 11, 1998.[20]Billboard's Asia bureau chief, Steve McClure, placed it in number seven of his top ten list of 1999 Asian albums.[17]
Wong's first "Bel Canto-like" performance on the song "Face" was well received, and her producer status was recognized for the first time, which led her to be shortlisted for the Taiwan Golden Melody Award for Best Record Producer at the 10th Golden Melody Awards.[5] The album was noted for some of its ballads, in contrast to the pop songs which had provided most of Wong's hits around that time.[11] "Red Beans", "Face" and "Love Commandments" have been popular songs of the album.[15]
As of February 1999, the album sold almost 2,500,000 copies worldwide, including imports.[2] It was rereleased in Japan on March 3, 1999, with the bonus track, "Eyes on Me".[2] The Japanese release reached No. 38 on the Oricon Albums Chart and charted for 12 weeks.[21]
^"柳重言谈创作"红豆"：想着王菲的声音几分钟搞定". www.chinanews.com.cn (in Chinese (China)). December 20, 2013. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
^"许巍沪上宣传：在路上". ent.sina.com.cn (in Chinese (China)). March 12, 2006. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
^"许巍呼吁宽容花儿 感激当年王菲送稿费(附图)". ent.sina.com.cn (in Chinese (China)). March 23, 2006. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
^ abStan Jeffries, Encyclopedia of world pop music, 1980-2001 2003 p224. "In January 1998, Wong won the favorite female category at Taiwan's Channel V awards. As part of her new goal of winning wider recognition, in the same year she released Sing and Play. The album included some Wong compositions and introduced more ballads to her canon, as most of her previous releases had been unerringly jaunty pop numbers. She then undertook a tour of Japan that lasted for six months. Her nomadic lifestyle throughout this period made her one of the most widely recognized people in East Asia (Asiaweek magazine included her in a list of "50 people you should know in China"), but it began to have an effect on her private life."
^Shane Homan, Access All Eras: Tribute Bands and Global Pop Culture, 2006, p224. "... almost exclusively on contributions from Hong Kong-, Beijing- and Singapore-based composers along with her own compositions on Sing and Play (1998), Only Love Strangers (1999), Fable (2000), Faye Wong (2001) and To Love (2003)."
