Contributed by Reynard Cheok
HER IMAGE MAY NOT MAKE WAVES BUT SHE ALWAYS TESTS NEW WATERS, THE STRAITS TIMES, LIFE! October 6, 1997, Wong Ah Yoke
In an industry in which fortunes swell and ebb as regularly as the tide, Tracy Huang stands out as an enigma.
She was never hip but, in her 21-year career, the singer, often referred to almost derisively as "a songbird", has outlasted just about everyone else on the Chinese pop scene. And despite eschewing publicity stunts except for an occasional press conference or television appearance, she is still one of the top Taiwanese stars.
Through the years, she has seen early competitors from the 70s such as Sarah Chen, Teresa Carpio and Gracie Riveria peak and disappear from the scene.
Huang told reporters here in a press conference last week that her secret was to keep re-inventing herself. "I always try to do something new with each album," she said.
For example, in her latest album, We Ah We – her 49th – she goes technotronic in a track called Heave can Wait.
She added in a gentle voice that most people thought would be stuck at middle-of-the-road ballads:
"In the past, producers wouldn't let me try anything too risky. But now that I'm producing my own albums, I want my track record to show that I am always willing to try new things, even before they become popular."
Her resume is impressive. Since her early days, singing Olivia Newton-John covers, she has tried many musical styles, including country, rhythm and blues, rock and even New Age.
The turning point came when she set up her own production company, Inner Music in 1991. The first song she produced herself was Bury the Heart, the theme number from Centrestage, which was a big hit.
For her new album, she picked the songwriters as well as came up with the concept. "The idea was to portray a sense of danger. The security problem in Taiwan is very worrying. You now only have to worry about yourself but also about your family members."
Much effort went into portraying that in the cover picture. Her heavy make-up was to create the effect of a mask and her raised arms, which covered part of her face, appeared to be warding off an attack.
Talking about the make-up suddenly started a humorous rain of thought in the singer. "My make-up for my old albums was so awful!" she exclaimed. "It was so heavy and dark."
In fact, she met a fan recently who said he had to buy a copy of her Love's Teardrops album which she released in the late '70s – because he found her make-up so funny.
"I didn't know whether to cry," she said with a laugh.
"These days, singers are more like Snow White and Prince Charmings because appearances are so important. And they have stylists to take care of their images. But in those days, we just sang. There was no one to style our hair and clothes. So we just picked our own clothes."
Some representatives from her recording company, EMI, brought out copies of her old albums and Huang passed them round gleefully to the reporters to laugh over the covers. Then she cried: "Quick, hide the, They're so embarrassing."
But she is not ashamed of her singing, she said. The following day, in a telephone conversation, she confessed that she listened to those old CDs again when she got home.
"My CDs now may have more elaborate music arrangements and packaging but when I listened to those '70s songs, I can still hear that I did my best," she said.
Those early days in Singapore are obviously still very important to her. Although her family now lives in Taiwan, Huang, who is married to a Singaporean, still feels a sense of attachment to the Republic.
In her mind, her career began here in 1976 with the release here of her first English album, Feelings. A TV host on Singapore TV at that time, the album made her the top-selling singer here.
"Although I actually started singing in Taiwan two years before coming to Singapore I don't consider that a career yet."
For her next English, which she hopes to record next year, she will return to Singapore to do it. and she aims to find some original material by young songwriters here.
The Big Sister of Chinese pop has always shown a concern for promoting young talent. In her new album, for example, she does a duet with a newcomer Chen Xiao Xia called Finaly Understand, in which she sings in Mandarin and Chen in Hokkien.
Perhaps that is one way that Huang remains relevant to young fans. After all, despite her long lengthy stay in the business, her image is still fresh. And whether through creative lighting, computer touch-up or other modern youth-restoring methods, the singer looks amazingly young in publicity pictures.
Even in real life, she looks only slightly older than when this reporter first met her more than 10 years ago.
The 40something makes sure her image is not sullied by keeping a veil over the actual age. When asked what the figure is, she replied: "Just say I feel I can be a good bottle of red wine."
We can drink to that. Whatever year she was born in, it was a good year.