Assignment 5: Movies or Recordings

I have interviewed my mom for the blog entry of this week, which is about recordings. My mom was born in Hong Kong. She was influenced by Hong Kong music industry since she was young.

When she was a teenager or 20ish years old, she loved to listen to the Canto-pop songs, especially Sam Hui’s and Leslie Cheung’s. Both of them are the famous Canton-pop singers in Hong Kong, and Leslie Cheung was also considered as one of the founding fathers of Cantopop while Sam Hui is considered to be the first major superstar of Cantopop. My mom appreciates them very much as she said Sam wrote a lot of good songs which was popular in Hong Kong music in the late 1970s; with its simple lyrics and light-hearted nature, they appealed to the Hong Kong masses, especially the working class. She bought most of his CDs back home and listened to them before she went to bed every night at that time. And Leslie is impressed by his handsome face and good voice. My mom said he was a successful actor and singer at the same time; he did really great jobs in his entire life, so he was voted into CNN's "top five most iconic musician of all time" placing behind Michael Jackson and The Beatles. Both of them are my mom’s idols. Besides, Albert Au is also one of her favorite singers; he is a Hong Kong English pop and Cantopop singer-songwriter and DJ. My mom loves to listen to his radio show, which makes her feel relaxed. Sometimes, he will invite some guests to sing folk songs with him. Until now, she still loves to listen to their music, and she keeps on listening to their recordings in leisure time.

She thinks there are many changes in the music industry in Hong Kong, especially the culture and the singers’ qualities. Firstly, in the lyrics of the songs, in the past, they were simple and inspirational. But the songs now are quite influenced by pop-culture; some of them are even ridiculous and don’t make sense now. So, this is one of the reasons that my mom is still listening to the old songs (from my point of views). On the other hand, the singers’ qualities are becoming worse in Hong Kong in these recent years. Singers just pay attention to their appearance but not singing techniques. The most important is tons of fans are supporting those “singers”, which make some of the singers who don’t have a good appearance can’t even have a foothold in the manufactory of music. This would not only corrupt its values, but also give teenagers a wrong message that they could be a “singer” as easy as they thought. Although my mom will listen to some songs that I am listening now, she is still addicted to songs of 1970s throughout.