Contributed by Reynard Cheok
TRACY TODAY, Guan LibingTHE SUNDAY TIMES, November 1, 1992
Singer Tracy Huang tells Guan Libing that she has been busy singing movie theme songs and setting up her own production company.
The amazing thing is the length of time it has taken for the media to cotton on. For Tracy Huang's low public profile hides a wealth of showbiz activity and the new direction which the Singapore-based singing star has chosen to take.
Why, right now, she is in Hongkon to discuss the rousing theme song for the next Tsui Hark blockbuster due in December.
It will not be her first. Just last year, she sang one for the autobiography Ruan Ling Yu (Centrestage) – it ended up winning Best Arrangement in the Taiwanese Golden Horse Awards.
But trying to keep up with her through reports in the press is difficult, if not impossible. Outside of a paragraph or two about her latest album release, the 39-year-old has generally been out of the news and out of sight.
Her last TV appearance in Singapore was about a year ago and she has not performed on stage in Taiwan since 1988. But she has not been "shaking legs" so to speak. She has had five albums in the past two years, including an English release Traces of Love, and a Mandarin effort Loving you from the bottom of my Heart this year.
Now, speaking in the soft, dreamy voice which made her famous and resulted in over 43 albums, Huang lets on: "I've been very busy in the last year ever since I started a production company in Taiwan."
It is called Inner Music, has a staff of five, and is in the business of producing stage shows and music videos as well as albums.
At present, she is grooming a Taiwanese teen for a release for release due out next year. And when Huang's contract wit Rock Music ends after three more albums , her future work will come under her own label.
No doubt how she fares with the young hopeful will determine when she realises another goal – to make her mark as a producer to top guns.
"That is challenging because the producer really needs to do something different for an established artiste."
Meanwhile, she is hoping that Inner Music will be so well established in the next three years that she can have a subsidiary office in Singapore and cut down on the travelling.
"In 1994, I also plan to stage my own concerts in Taipei and Singapore. I can't do them any earlier because the National Stadium in Taipei caught fire recently.
"Dick Lee will be helping me to organise them,: she adds. Her latest English release, Traces of Love, was co-produced by Dick Lee and a Taiwanese.
Until then though, Huang has more than enough to occupy her. Indeed, she only spends an average of four months a year in Singapore.
The rest of the time is spent on recording or promoting her releases in Taipei or Hongkong. In between, she flies to Los Angeles to visit her elderly parents.
Does her husband, a Singaporean in the watch business, resent her hectic schedule?
"My husband does not mind me travelling so much because he's with me most of the time. he has dealings in Taiwan and Hongkong too and we always arrange our overseas trip so that we can be together."
Her husband's company is a reassuring touch because even though she may not have fans mobbing her like they do Aaron Kwok, she is still stared at and asked for her autograph.
And when overseas, she grouses about "not waking up to the chirping of birds outside my window. I also miss the greenness of Singapore and its clean unpolluted air."
Home is a spacious bungalow in Bukit Timah where she lives with her husband and mother-in-law. The couple met when she performed in Singapore in the late 1970s.
"It was love at first sight because he fell in love with my voice."
But press her for more details about the man in her life and she clams up, allowing only that his name is Robert and he is in his early 40s.
They both enjoy listening to music it appears and, in particular, he flips over karaoke.
Married for more than 10 years, Huang remains childless. She says that she will let nature take its course and has already found someone on whom to lavish any motherly feelings she may have.
"Frankly, I'm very attached to my brother's 10-year-old daughter, Scarlet. She is almost like a daughter to me."
Scarlet's voice is heard in the opening bars of the title track on Huang's current Mandarin release, Loving You.
Huang started singing when she was 16. She made her public debut in Singapore in 1977, capturing the public's attention with her fragile, delicate looks and whispery voice. Her forte, till today, is the kind of sentimental ballads with which Olivia Newton-John is associated.
But that does not mean that she ignores trends and developments in music. She spends, she says, about $1000 a month on CDs and cassettes to keep up.
"Although I sing basically the same sort of composition, I strive for change in their production. That's why I quit a recording company after a few years. I believe that a new label and a different production team will inject freshness."
Looking for new presentations and new avenues to explore does not include movies. The celluloid rote is out for her, she says.
"I'm not like Anita Mui or Aaron Kwok. I'm not as ambitious and prefer to concentrate on one thing at a time."
These days, too, she strives for simplicity, both in her dressing – Claude Montana, Giorgio Armani and Karl Lagerfeld for their clean lines, and in black white and earth tones – and singing.
"I even use fewer accessories," she chuckles. Her recent album covers have not depicted her with any jewellery. In the past, rings and necklaces were a must.
"I'm a recording artiste and I don't rely on a glossy image to sell my albums", is her latest outlook on life.
Despite her large body of work and the string of awards she has won, she does not see herself as a star. Still, the accolades continue to come her way, the last being an award from the Taiwanese Cultural Ministry in 1990 for her album, Good Day, My Love.
Her unpretentious ways obviously strike a chord in many. Surveys in Taiwan show that her fans are between 15 and 25, an age group which would arguably go gaga over younger, more glamorous acts.
Meanwhile, there is China to conquer. Her albums have sold there since 1987 and Huang plans a trip there next month to see what more needs to be done to make herself a household name in that country.