THE CULT OF CANTOPOP
Words Hamish McKenzie

Orchestrated screaming, fervent fans, and best-selling performers who can’t sing. Welcome to Cantopop.

Two girls standing beside each other in the crowd scream as powerfully as their lungs will allow. Their eyes are scrunched closed, and their hands cling to placards blaring the names of their latest heavily promoted pop idols, the Sunboy’z. Every few seconds, the teenagers break from their deafening verbal assaults to catch shuddering, euphoric breaths, before again launching into laryngitis territory: “Sunboy’z! Sunboy’zzz!” Meanwhile, the three boy’z – they of the inexplicable apostrophe – gyrate awkwardly on a cramped stage in front of the newly-opened HMV store in Causeway Bay, their hair perfectly sculpted, their fashion appropriately chic, and their singing almost in tune.

The Sunboy’z are one of the freshest products from the Emperor Entertainment Group’s assembly line. With pretty faces, cherubic smiles and some damn good stylists, they perfectly fit the criteria for Cantopop stardom. Whether or not they can carry a tune and dance – both debatable points – is incidental. They are crafted to fit an image: record companies use a formula that makes Cantopop fans scream – and it’s the same one that sells CDs. “They’re not looking for talent,” says Dr. John Erni, an expert on youth consumption culture. “They’re looking for the right faces that transmit the right sort of feelings.” Erni, an associate professor in English and communications at City University of Hong Kong, says that for many of the stars there’s not even any pretence they can sing well – “You do end up with a lot of them who have very little musical talent at all” – but what’s important is that they try hard to improve and, with training, it might all work out for the best. “You’ve just got to have a pretty face first, and the music will catch up at some point.”

But the fans don’t seem to care. They’re attracted to the glamour, says Erni. They don’t see the machinations of the Cantopop industry – that the music, the lyrics, the media campaigns and the public appearances all follow a prescribed path. And so they take an active role in creating what some would call ‘imaginary heroes,’ devoting large parts of their teenage years to pursue stars like Sunboy’z, Twins, Hacken Lee, Eason Chan, Joey Cheung, Aaron Kwok, Andy Lau, Niki Chow, Don Li, Mandy Chiang, Vincy Chan – the list could fill the AsiaWorld-Arena. Stars’ fan sites, blogs and forums are all heavily frequented – Mandy Chiang’s personal blog, for instance, receives about 400 comments a day – and many fans learn the stars’ daily routines, often following them to beauty salons and recording studios and waiting for hours outside for them to reappear. Hard-core fans will go for days without sleep just to get close to their idols, and some will spend all their money on gifts for the singers, Erni says. And then there’s the orchestrated screaming. Fans at performances will shout for their idols in unison; when one group tires, another will step in, maintaining constant levels of hysteria.

New EEG star Vincy Chan is just coming to grips with all the attention. Although her first album was released on July 27, it has already gone gold, selling more than 20,500 copies. Finding a quiet moment in a café near the EEG’s Wanchai offices, the 23-year-old accounting graduate says she gets a kind of satisfaction from the screaming fans – “but actually, I’m quite afraid that they will lose their voices.” She has received gifts, cards and letters from fans, and she talks to many at her public appearances. One recently bought 30 copies of
her CD; another said she would bake her a cheesecake for her birthday. “It feels really great because I always think I am just a very normal person,” she says. But there can be downsides. One particularly ardent teenager follows her to all her appearances and keeps asking for her phone number. When she refuses – “It’s not really convenient” – the boy gets very upset. Chan concedes it’s annoying. Still, she enjoys the lifestyle – after all, she
points out, isn’t attracting attention the point of being an artist?

About 50 photographers and reporters are crammed into a roped-off area about two metres wide and 10 metres long in front of the HMV store. Expectant fans standing six rows deep around the media are poised with cellphones and cameras at the ready. When the popstars emerge – Vincy Chan, Sun Boy’z, Don Li and Mandy Chiang, Twins – the screeching starts, escalating with the arrival of each even-more-popular idol, and the crowd surges forward, clambering to get closer. The stars stand stock-still in front of the oversized HMV banner ready for the ribbon-cutting ceremony, grins fixed permanently onto their heavily made-up faces. It looks as if Twins have substituted their wax imitations from Madame Tussaud’s for
the occasion.

Cantopop stars feed on attention. It is their oxygen. Starved of it, their careers would choke and die. Just as well they’ve got the media, then. “The media has played a great part in making these stars,” says Erni. While the realities of the industry are boring and the music bland, he says, the tabloids step in to glamourise and commodify the stars by circulating gossip. Stories and photos in the press keep them in the public consciousness, and, even though they may hate to admit it, they need the exposure. Chan is succinct: “If they don’t see you in the papers for a few months, they will forget about you.” Most artists also seek to extend their career span by appearing in television shows, advertisements and film. But Chan, runner-up in last year’s EEG singing contest, says she’ll just concentrate on singing for the time being.

Karaoke is another way for stars to branch out. In a time of shrinking revenues – in part because of piracy – the industry is looking to cash in from Hong Kong’s karaoke lounges. Record companies enter into agreements with the lounges to promote new songs, and stars will often visit to meet their fans. It’s reached a point where revenue from karaoke distribution has surpassed that brought in by concerts, says Erni. “Cantopop stars increasingly know they need to reach out to fans and consumers through karaoke.”

Indeed, to some extent, the success of a Cantopop ditty can be measured by its karaoke potential. Amsterdam-based Chow Yiu Fai earns money writing lyrics for Cantopop songs. A successful number, he says, requires “clever hook lines, good karaoke potentials, sad love themes, easy to remember melodies, and, of course, likeable performers.” But other significant non-music related factors, marketing in particular, also contribute to sales. “It’s basically the market mechanism, which is always a balancing act between promotion and product quality,” he says in an email interview. When he’s writing a song for an artist, he often has a particular fan in mind, based on age, gender, or even class – “Say, a young girl growing up in public housing.”

Record stores aren’t usually venues for running races, but the guards whisking Twins away to the security room at the back of HMV have built up quite a pace as they strive to keep a gaggle of over-eager fans at a safe distance from the popstar pair. The duo complete the 20-metre journey from the stage unscathed and in record time – but it’s not over for them yet. The fans waiting outside the security room think there’s no back door, so they’re going to wait around until the stars have to finally re-emerge.

In Hong Kong, the fans Chow writes for are more uniform than their counterparts in the West. “I always envy the diversity of western pop culture,” says Chow. “Like the alternative scene, the gothic scene, the metal scene and so on. They remain marginal to mainstream pop, but still they are there and quite lively.” And with more kinds of pop artists in the West, Chow says, the appeal is to a wider audience. “In Hong Kong, it seems only teenagers are ‘still’ listening to pop.”

That might be explained in part by Cantopop’s limited reach. Erni posits that in the West, artists singing in English consciously package themselves as global stars while Cantopop singers are really only serving a limited market within China – mainly Cantonese-speaking people in Hong Kong. In turn, that affects how stars relate to their fans. Rather than playing the aloof celebrity, as so often American popstars do, Cantopop’s leading lights tend to interact more with their fans, via online forums or through appearances at shopping malls.

“I don’t want to have too much distance from my fans,” explains Chan, who says some write to her with their problems and she can act almost as a counsellor. She tries to remember names and reply personally to fan mail, when she can find the time. “I think it’s quite important because to me writing a letter is just a small matter, but to them it’s very important.” She believes it’s a cultural difference between Hong Kong and the West that the stars aren’t regarded as such an elite. And besides, in small Hong Kong it’s much more difficult for the stars to hide.

Seventeen-year-old Moris Fung admits to something of a crush on Vincy Chan. “She’s very nice,” he confesses. He’s been to all her public appearances and listens to her album twice a day. He has given her presents and spoken to her, when he complimented her on her singing. “She sings very well and her voice attracts me.” Now, he and about 20 other fans are staking out the door of HMV’s security room, where the EEG stars are safely tucked away following their brief appearances. Daniel Tsan, 13, is also waiting for Vincy. He, too, listens to her album twice a day, he has two of her posters – one in his bedroom and one in the living room – and if he had a chance to talk to her, he would shower her with praise: “You’re very pretty, your songs are great, you are gorgeous and you sing well.” Sweat beads drip from his face.

Vincy Chan realises she influences people and hopes she can encourage her fans to be good members of society. Mandy Chiang and Don Li, another popular young singing duo, feel the same. “I know fans look up to us, so we have to behave when we are in the public eye,” says Chiang, 24, just prior to performing at the HMV store opening. “I am aware of my behaviour, so I always tell myself to be a good person.” Li hopes he’s a good role model and is always trying to improve his image for his fans. He thinks it’s healthy fans look up to their idols: “To follow us is better than to stay on the street and have nothing to do.”

It’s a point echoed by Erni. He suggests fan behaviour – even with all its extremities – provides an alternative image for youth culture in which young people find empowerment. Youth often feel alienated, he points out, and can’t find ways to be connected to social groups, so they turn to drugs or, increasingly, computer games, and become solitary recluses. Being a part of a fan club or idolising a popstar helps them organise their passions and peer relationships. “Through that they learn some value – value of loyalty, of trust, camaraderie.” Even orchestrated screaming indicates a highly organised and mobilised youth culture not to be dismissed as mere idol worship. “We need not discredit them,” says Erni. “ Just think about their alternatives.”