Stephanie Sun: Sun Will Still Shine
The Taiwan-based Singaporean singer sold more than 800,00 copies of her
second and third albums- My Desired Happiness and Kite-in Taiwan alone this
year.
The 23-year-old also picked up several awards, including the Best Newcomer
at the prestigious Taiwanese Golden Melody Awards in May.
She became an overnight success when her debut album, I Am Yanzi, took Taiwan
by storm last year.
"I've spent a lot of my time in Taipei this year and I've seen a few big events
unflod there since. The recent incident in which Chu Mei-feng (a former
Taipei city counsellor) was filmed in her own house with a hidden camera is one
case in point. It was bad enough when the media tailed you or took stupid
pictures of you digging your nose.
Now they are even going into people's house and the aftermath of it was that
they gave away free VCDs of Chu having sex. That's sick and damn freaky.
Big events like 9-11 always enhance my belief that life is very short and the
need for me to be in a happy state. I was in Beijing then. I saw the second
plane crashing into the building on TV when i went back to my hotel room.
And for a while it seemed like a movie, nothing like reality at all...
It took half an hour before everything sank in and then i was
panicking because my sister was in Manhatten and i kept calling and
calling but couldn't get through.
Later on, she called back and said that Broadway was just empty and that
has never happened before.
You could b3e working in your office when suddenly there's a crash and then
you die. so, whatever i'm doing now, I'm definitely making sure that
I'm happy and not doing something for the sake of doing it......
"My desired happiness is in little things I'm finding every day. Like when
I'm tired and i can just sleep, or when I'm hungry and i can eat my
favourite food- which is yuan yang huo guo (Hot pot with both clear and
spicy soup).
The economic situation is really awful now. I hear friends getting retrenched.
And the music industry (in Taiwan) is also in a really bad shape. I'm really
lucky the bad economy has not had much impact on my album sales. But i see
and do know a lot of artistes- some promising newcomers and older ones as well
- who are badly affected.
They may have good stuff, but for some reasons, they are just now selling
good enough. some just end up being dropped by their records labels.
For me, my company knows me very well. We have a strong artiste and
repertoire team which is very focused and very clear about whats' a good song
and what's not.
My outlook has always been to make a good album. Regardless of how the
economy slides, it's not going to affect my music. I've just recorded a
pre-concert album of covers of songs like Venus, Tori Amos' Silent All
These Years, and Patty Smyth's Spmetimes Love Just Ain't Enough.
I'll start my forst regional tour in Taipei around March or April.
There's Taiwan, Hongkong, Malaysia, China and Singapore. Actually we wanted
to kick off in Singapore but we could not get the venue."
【 完 】
[ The Straits Times, Sunday Plus, December 30, 2001]