We’ve all heard the story of little Sarah Chen winning a Taiwan national singing contest and bringing home a big refrigerator. But her music career was far from straightforward. Even the simplest question had no clear answer, like when did her career truly begin? 

For most singers, it’s an easy question; find their first album and its release date, and there’s your answer: Teresa Teng at age 14, Chyi Yu at age 21, and Meng Ting-Wei at age 20. But while Sarah Chen released her first single Water Wagon Girl at age 9, her path was far less linear. She recorded a few songs at 12, released a full album at 15, then remained inactive until she reached 18.

Further complicating matters, if you listen to Sarah Chen’s interviews, you might think she started even later. After winning her first major music award, the Golden Bell Best Female Singer award at age 26, Chen credited her mom and collaborators for the “2,000 days” of hard work. That’s 5.5 years, placing the start of her career around age 21. Later, in a 1992 interview with Gui Ya-Lei, Chen said her career started at age 18.

So, when did Sarah Chen’s career truly begin? Was it at 9, 15, 18, or 21? And does it really matter?

Sarah Chen had many reasons to discount her work before age 18 (or even 21). First, she was required to obtain a singer’s certificate before turning professional, which she did at 17. The ~30 songs from her childhood might as well be considered home recordings.

Second, there is justification for discounting her albums between ages 18 and 21, as the record labels she worked with were obscure and soon went out of business. Fewer than 10 songs from that period were preserved through official channels. Her major professional output formally began at 21.

Third, Chen’s singing underwent noticeable changes throughout her childhood. While her earlier work was commercially released, it was the work of an amateur undergoing major vocal and stylistic changes. A strong case can be made, then, to support the idea that Sarah Chen truly started at 21, with Haishan Records.

But accepting age 21 as the beginning means writing off nearly 100 songs from six full albums, including Sarah Chen’s first English album. Though these songs lack official support, fans have preserved them, the majority now available on YouTube (see Sarah Chen’s Complete Works #1. Childhood to Teenage Songs). Although some of the songs were melodically jarring, Chen’s singing was compelling, revealing just how much talent was buried in them.

Moreover, these “training wheel” songs provide significant insight into Sarah Chen’s career, artistic development, and even her eventual decision to leave music. Despite starting as a child prodigy, Sarah Chen endured a lengthy struggle against formidable career obstacles, most of which were beyond her control. Her later success was a testament to her excellence, dedication, and resilience. 

One of the most troubling obstacles Sarah Chen faced was being made to perform adult-themed songs. The material she was given at ages 9-12 was appalling. The promotion of her as a child prodigy, knowing full well what she had to sing, was maddening. The potential negative impact on her development was unknown, but in later TV appearances, Chen was noticeably uneasy when her childhood songs were brought up. Her first full album, Love’s Sun, released at age 15, was a better fit. A few tracks were age-appropriate. Yet, Chen couldn’t escape ballads. 

Sarah Chen wasn't the only child singer of that era made to perform adult-themed songs. Teresa Teng, who began recording at 14, sang a large number of ballads in her first years. However, Teng's early songs were, as a whole, more cheerful and contextualized by cultural elements that diluted their adult themes. Teng was also older. In contrast, nearly all of Sarah Chen’s songs at ages 9-12 were emotionally heavy, lacking an element of happiness that could have softened their impact. 

The contrast in the materials assigned to the two singers is evident in the two songs they covered for each other. At age 11, Sarah Chen was the original Mandarin performer of Unforgettable, a Japanese song about being abandoned by a lover. Chen’s lines were depressive, "Ah, you left me, I hate you,  hate you, I cannot forget you." Three months later, the 17-year-old Teresa Teng released a cover of Chen's song. Performed at a faster tempo, Teng’s lines were cheerful, "Ah, you left me, I love you, love you, I cannot forget you." Along with its upbeat tempo and other comical lyrical changes, Teng's version could play at a festival. 

The lyrical changes in Teresa Teng’s cover of Unforgettable suggest that even back then, the music industry was aware of the potential issues surrounding adult-theme songs. What’s baffling, however, is the opposite shift in Chen's cover of Teresa Teng's song Coral Love, a song about a girl's first love. Teng, at age 15, originally sang the song in a playful way, describing the first love in the image of a fish. However, when Chen covered it at age 12, the fish image was removed, making the song heavily introspective. 

Child singers should not have been given such songs. One might even expect that Chen would fail their delivery. But she didn’t. She gave an accurate interpretation. That old soul, forced out of a young singer, would permeate Sarah Chen’s music in later years. Her success in Dream to Awakening and Red Dust was no accident: the talent was always there, and so was the emotional investment. 

As she came of age, Sarah Chen’s voice took a qualitative turn for the better, contrasting with the boyish voice she once had during her major vocal change. She could deliver the purest sound with strength across a wide frequency range (~C3-A5). The lack of "flavor" in her vocals made her suitable for performing any song, establishing her as one of the most versatile singers. 

Yet Chen faced new problems: the lack of quality original songs and her vocal similarity to Teresa Teng, already a dominating figure in the Asian-language market. The two, just five years apart, had briefly crossed paths as child singers and later performed 19 songs in common. Now, with Teng far ahead in her career, their vocal similarity created major problems for Sarah Chen’s career development.

Of the four Mandarin albums Chen released between ages 18 and 21, the most beautiful was Cold Rain Songs, a collection of cover songs. Other than sounding slightly sweeter, the 18-year-old Chen was strikingly similar to her more established self. Yet the poorly composed songs in the other three albums derailed her momentum. Stylistically similar, many of these were uninspiring, nightclub-style songs.  Chen also had trouble steering her vocal strengths: her energetic and sweet delivery only highlighted the poor composition of the songs. Teresa Teng’s fans would instantly recognize the resemblance in Quietly Saying Good-Bye, where Chen sounded a lot like Teng.

Adding to her struggles, Chen had no control over the fate of her record labels. Big Ocean Records, which released several of her albums, went out of business, resulting in the loss of about 40 songs.

Amidst all her struggles and setbacks, Sarah Chen did what she could: she perfected her singing. One of her most remarkable achievements was her exceptional command of Mandarin pronunciation. Listening to Sarah Chen sing is like hearing a professional broadcaster narrate a story. Chen didn’t just make the melodies sound good, she made the words sound beautiful.

This was no small feat for a southerner, as southern dialects lack certain phonemes used in standard Mandarin, leading to common pronunciation errors. Chen’s flawless articulation was notable even when compared to seasoned singers. The difference was evident when listening to her cover of other singers’ songs: Chen was the one getting all the nuanced pronunciations right. Even Teresa Teng stumbled over the tongue-twisters in My Native Land: “Silkworms must eat mulberry leaves to produce silk, flowers must bloom to spread their seeds.” When a recording of Chen’s live performance of the same song surfaced recently, I had to check the dictionary to confirm that it was she, not Teresa Teng, who had pronounced every syllable perfectly.

Perhaps Chen was lucky to have parents who spoke standard Mandarin. But I had long suspected that her perfect articulation was not luck, but effort. In interviews, Chen sounded like a southerner; the broadcaster in her emerged only when she sang. This suspicion was confirmed by her childhood recordings. At 12, she made the typical pronunciation errors of a southerner. At 15, she had improved but still lacked clarity. By 18, she was nearly perfect. By 21, when her career truly took off, Sarah Chen was a singing dictionary.

While pronunciation may seem like a minor aspect of singing, especially to listeners who don’t distinguish between standard and accented Mandarin, Chen’s pursuit of perfection revealed the immense effort she put in. It also showed an unusual linguistic talent, as she mastered Mandarin articulation after puberty, challenging linguistic theories that claim accent-free speech is unattainable beyond childhood. Somehow, Sarah Chen kept the critical period for phonological processing open well into early adulthood.

And it wasn’t just Mandarin. Chen recorded in Cantonese, Japanese, Taiwanese, and English. Despite growing up entirely in Taiwan, Chen sang with perfect English. She achieved this relatively late, as her first English album at 20 contained some articulation errors, but her later recordings, made between ages 25-30, were flawless. Of course, Sarah Chen wasn’t alone in performing in multiple languages. Teresa Teng, Julie Sue, Chyi Yu all did as well. What set Chen apart was the level of perfection she achieved.

Unfortunately, few of Chen’s later interviews touched upon this phenomenon. The only relevant one came in a 1992 interview with Gui Ya-Lei, where they discussed Sarah Chen’s Taiwanese Songs. Chen had mentioned that despite growing up in Taiwan, her first recording of the album didn’t go well due to accent imperfection. She commented, in passing, that she had underestimated the challenge of singing in Taiwanese, assuming she would master it as she had done with English. Gui did not press further, leaving questions about how Chen attained phonemic perfection.

Chen did leave some clues about her linguistic talent. First, because she was discovered early, she began performing in clubs as a teenager. Catering to foreigners in hotels, she performed in English, expanding her repertoire from a few to hundreds. Until she broke into Mandopop in her early 20s, Chen’s foundation was in English pops. This early immersion likely played a key role in refining her pronunciation while she was still young.

Second, Chen had an exceptional ear for subtle sound differences and a talent for imitation. Her early albums, particularly Quietly Saying Good-Bye, were an excellent imitation of Teresa Teng. She could even imitate male singers with remarkable accuracy. In a 1995 TV appearance, Chen spontaneously mimicked Lo Ta-Yu while recounting their recording of Red Dust. The graceful Chen looked nothing like the serious Lo, yet her hilarious imitation was spot on.

Sarah Chen would use her imitation talent to develop a unique singing style that remains inimitable to this day. That elusive style was shaped by failures, setbacks, and an initial assimilation to Teresa Teng before differentiation. 

Even with her exquisite voice and brilliant mind, it took Sarah Chen over a decade to achieve greatness. Signs of her greatness are detectable in her first 100 recordings, but the contrast between her early work and later masterpieces shows the heights she later reached.  

It was not Sarah Chen’s success but her failures that set her apart. They built her resilience and drove her to perfection. Yet those same failures, along with the experience of being forced to sing adult-themed songs as a child, exacted an untold toll. From the beginning, music was both Sarah Chen's refuge and her torment. 

Sarah Chen is the fourth of six children†. Her father was an interior designer and maker of high-end furniture. Her mother was Chen's manager and business partner. Her parents, educated in Japan, followed traditional and strict family rules, including good manners, a 10 p.m. curfew, and requiring all dates to be brought home. Chen credited these strict rules for shaping her good habits.

Sarah Chen showed a strong passion for music from an early age, singing and dancing whenever she heard music. She joined a choir and received music training as a child. In elementary school, rainy days were known as "Sarah Chen days" as she entertained her class with singing. In middle school, she would teach music to her class when the music teacher was absent. Her talent was recognized early: after winning a national singing contest at age 8, Chen released her first single, Water Wagon Girl, at age 9.

The development of that talent, however, began with a blunder by Taiwan's entertainment industry. Seven Star Records released Chen's first Mandarin songs at age 12. Yet they had a 25-year-old man (the co-singer on Chen's album) write lyrics for her. He either didn’t know her age or was egocentric, giving her appalling lines that reflected male fantasies about how women should feel toward men. Nobody should have been singing those lines, least of all a 12-year-old child. Instead of correcting the gross error, Seven Star praised the lyricist's experience in writing songs while promoting Chen as a rising star with an unforgettable voice. Chen hurried through some lines and mumbled others, as if singing faster could help her escape.

The 1983 TTV interview of Chen suggested that she became aversive to performing ballads. Yet her passion for music was too strong, and her talent too great, to give up. When she was invited to a singing contest on TV at age 14 (the "Golden Melody" competition), she was relieved to be assigned Intersecting Lines, as its lyrics were almost acceptable. Her performance left a strong impression on the audience, adding to her determination to become a singer.

After completing nine years of mandatory education, Sarah Chen went to college (Chinese Culture University), majoring in dance. In the fall of her sophomore year, at age 17, hiding her intentions from her family, Chen sneaked to a southern city to take a test for her singer's certificate. That winter, she began a two-year stint singing English songs in Taiwan hotels.

Perhaps because she was spending too much time away from college, Chen was forced to choose between school and singing, and she chose the latter, though some reports suggest she may have later completed her degree. In 1976, at age 18, Chen released her first album as an adult, the lovely Farewell, My Love. By then, she had found a way to handle love songs: expressing her feelings freely and deeply.

Her stardom in music, however, was slow to rise. Chen tried an alternative career as a TV host. In 1977, she started hosting a two-year-long show, Thousand-Mile Ride, with Hua-Shi, riding motorcycles to various places in Taiwan. In 1979, she began hosting Green Meadows and Ode to the Galaxy. She also co-starred in a movie with Wen Shuai (This Love Could Be Remembered), though the lackluster experience convinced her not to act again.

Original sources on Chen’s upbringing suggest that, contrary to widespread rumors, her parents took a secondary role in her career and were often reluctant supporters. A 1985 Malaysian magazine reported that Chen's parents were lukewarm about her childhood singing. She was said to have secretly entered the national singing competition at age 8. TTV reported that she obtained her singer's certificate without telling her family. When she won her first major music award in 1985 and called her father, he asked when she'd be home; he missed her, not her award. Her mother, too, helped out of necessity. In a 1992 interview, Chen made clear that the collaboration with her mother was her own choice. 

Sarah Chen was fiercely independent all her life. After all, there’s no pea princess in a family of six or seven. Stubborn from birth and toughened by sibling rivalry, Chen was more a Doc than a Snow White.

* Sources: TTV's 1983 special issue about Sarah Chen, 1980s magazines from Malaysia and Singapore, Chen's 1992 interview, Seven Star album cover, and the author's synthesis of other sources.

In 1979, at age 21, Sarah Chen signed with Haishan Records and began a highly productive phase of her career. Though she had been in the music industry for over a decade, this period felt like her true beginning. Chen released seven albums and several singles, totaling around 90 songs, all well preserved by her record label. Despite some frustrations, including a whole year without recording due to a lack of original material, her time with Haishan was successful. By the end of 1982, when she left Haishan, Chen had not only silenced doubts about her continued success but was also on the verge of becoming Taiwan’s best female singer.

Unlike some of her peers or later stars who shot to fame overnight, Sarah Chen’s rise to the top was a slow slog. Returning to Haishan, the label that had produced her teenage album Love’s Sun, did not immediately bring stardom. Her first two albums with Haishan felt like an extension of her late teenage work. The songs were uneven in quality, like rags Cinderella wore, stifling Chen’s beautiful voice.

In addition to going to college, Sarah Chen took on various side-gigs to explore her potential: modeling for commercials, hosting TV shows, and performing English songs. She also embraced the political climate of the time. Her first Haishan album, a collection of ballads, was provocatively titled The Statue of Liberty Was Crying, named after its only politically charged track during rising tension between Taiwan and the U.S.  Chen also sang the election anthem The Holy Ballot.

Conscious of societal and cultural needs, Sarah Chen was far more than a ballad singer recording lackluster love songs. She was everywhere, performing songs that struck the heart and touched its edges.

Just as Cinderella was about to suffocate in her rags, the new year’s bell rang in a new decade, the 1980s, bringing Sarah Chen her first batch of melodically beautiful songs, Road Home and Beauty and Sorrow. Heaven smiled upon her, temporarily suspending her decade-long trials.

Following Haishan Records’ tradition of pairing albums with movie themes, the 1980 albums contained theme songs from two popular films, with the remaining tracks thematically complementing them. At last, the music matched Chen’s jade-like vocals. These songs not only established her as a prominent theme song artist but also placed Chen on the brink of a career breakthrough.

While the two 1980 albums produced no major hits, likely due to their dual role as movie themes, they were important for Sarah Chen’s career development. Until then, she had been in danger of fading away. These albums allowed her to establish her unique style, performing songs with personal significance. In fact, Chen re-recorded two of them in her final album 15 years later, likely a tribute to the 1980 albums that had set the tone for her future career.

Departing from ballads, Road Home contains several songs about familial relationships, notably two tracks expressing gratitude towards mothers: Story of a Child and Mother's Smile. Story of a Child is considered by some as the best early Sarah Chen song, showing her incredibly beautiful vocals. While it could have been a children’s song, Chen’s tender and affectionate singing turned it into a loving gift to mothers. Fifteen years later, in her final album Forever, Sarah, Chen completed the story with The Girl Has Grown Up, a tribute to her mother, the one who stood by her through every trial and triumph.

Although never officially recognized, Sarah Chen’s mother was an indispensable contributor to her work. As her business manager and best friend, Chen’s mother was her greatest support, offering professional advice throughout her career. “Mama is my best friend and best work partner,” Chen said in a 1992 interview with The Voice of Chinese Americans, “she may not look the part, but she has deep professional knowledge.”

One of the most significant roles Chen’s mother played was mental support. The unusually tough trials of Chen’s early career were understandably discouraging. Just as things began to improve in the early 1980s, Taiwan’s lack of music production left her without a recording opportunity for an entire year. According to the 1985 album notes (Affection), the anxiety led to many sleepless nights as Chen questioned why she had to be the one enduring endless challenges. These struggles also shaped her extremely high professional standards, which, in turn, led to an exhausting work style. Her mother’s steadfast support carried her through those early trials.

A key feature of Sarah Chen’s work style was her deep emotional investment, making her vulnerable to burnout. She was “one with her music,” pouring her soul into every line she sang. It was like Harry Potter -style magic, conjuring a patronus whose power and warmth is felt by its receiver. And she did it so well. Just listen to Night Whisper (1980), where her loving soul resonates through every syllable. 

Chen’s emotive singing made her songs compelling, magical, deeply moving. But singing like that is exhausting. The singer has to detach from reality, imagine and embody the right emotions, and translate them into sounds that accurately convey those feelings. Given the nature of her repertoire – largely melancholic and often philosophical – every performance required her to reopen the deepest emotions in those songs. The better Chen was at conjuring up the patronus for her audience, the more punishing it became for her.

By Chen's own account, and as Tan Jian-Chang and Lo Ta-Yu later observed, her mother was the one person who truly understood the toll Chen's work took on her and the only one who could calm her down. Her mother's name deserved to be on every single one of Sarah Chen’s albums [footnote 1]. 

Songwriter Wawa, who collaborated with Chen on the 1995 Forever, recounted their time together. "What impressed me most," said Wawa, "was how close Sarah was to her mother. They shared a deep bond and depended on each other." 

By 1981, when Sarah Chen released Spring Comes Again, another movie-theme album, her rise to the top had become unstoppable. The album contained songs by renowned composers Tony Wong and Steven Liu Chia-Chang, key collaborators with Chen at Haishan Records. Joseph Ye, who contributed three songs to this album and more than ten throughout Chen’s career, would later crown her as the “female singer with the deepest understanding of Taiwan’s culture.” They all recognized the exceptional talent before them.

Chen’s unique style was unmistakable in this album; her beautifully expressive voice, delightful in its own way, was a perfect match for the film’s heroine. Although Chen still shared vocal suitability with Teresa Teng, it’s now impossible to detect any trace of Teng in Chen’s singing. The struggle over her artistry was over. It would take just one hit for Sarah Chen to become a household name.

But in a world still captivated by Teresa Teng, Chen's album failed to sell. She would not find another recording chance for a whole year. About to give up, she made plans to attend college in the U.S., until the producer of her next album knocked on her door. 

Sarah Chen’s first big career breakthrough came during the 1982 Lunar New Year when her album Sunset Follows Me Home became a bestseller. It’s ironic that the queen of nostalgic ballads rose to the top with a song so different, a cheerful tune about returning home at sunset.  But perhaps this was to be expected. A year earlier, Story of a Child had also stood out. Love songs sell, but they aren’t the only genre in which Chen excelled.

Chen followed up her success with her final album under Haishan Records, Her Name Is Love. The title track, again not a ballad, was a tribute to women and their contributions to society and family. By then, Chen had found her signature sound. While she could effortlessly hit high notes, her voice became incredibly soothing when she lowered it slightly. Listening to Chen is uniquely comforting, like a gentle hand easing one’s pain. So soothing, in fact, that many of her songs make perfect lullabies for the night.

Chen’s 1982 albums contained many songs with this soothing quality: Sunset Follows Me Home, Moon Carries My Love, Fog, Seven-Mile Fragrance, and Autumn Night Whisper, to name a few. As her age increased in the following decade, her voice naturally deepened, and its soothing quality became even more noticeable in her later work. But the first signs of that magic were already woven throughout her 1982 albums.

Sarah Chen was no stranger to live performances: singing in clubs as a child made her a veteran. As a teenager, she began improvising on TV at the audience’s request. Not long after, she hosted major TV shows. Yet, unlike Teresa Teng, Sarah Chen rarely held concerts. When she first joined Rock Records in 1986, Chen said that one of her biggest wishes was to one day hold a Sarah Chen concert. That wish remains unfulfilled.

As she was becoming a household name in the early 1980s, Chen appeared in two major stage competitions, both in collaboration with Tony Wong. These performances came at career-defining moments. The recordings of both only recently surfaced, offering a fresh look at this phase of her career.

The first was a live performance of My Native Land (原乡人) at the October 1981 Golden Horse Awards. Tony Wong had been nominated for the “Best Movie Theme” award for composing the film’s theme song. Teresa Teng was the original singer, and by default, the expected performer. 

But when the 1981 Golden Horse Awards recording was released in November 2024, to everyone’s surprise, the performer was Sarah Chen. Her substitution for Teng suggests that by then, both she and Wong were confident she was no worse than Teresa Teng. 

As the camera panned to the composer, it showed a vast stadium filled with people as Chen, dressed in a pink flowery dress, delicately navigated the song’s tongue-twister lyrics. The stakes were high: she could jeopardize Wong’s award chances or damage her own budding reputation as a stand-in for Teresa Teng, whose original recording was surely on the audience’s mind for comparison. But at the end of the night, the award went to Wong. Chen must have breathed a sigh of relief. She had passed the test.

The reward for passing one test was the chance to take another. In 1982, Tony Wong composed Promise Me Tonight, an English and Japanese song, for the World Popular Song Festival (“Popcon”). Chosen as one of the top 30 songs from over 10,000 global entries, it earned a chance to be performed live in Tokyo. With her unique ability to sing in both English and Japanese, Sarah Chen became the performer, placing her on one of the world’s biggest stages along notable singers like a then-14-year-old Celine Dion.

So Sarah Chen went to Japan, where her parents had once studied. After advancing from the first round, she became one of 16 finalists to perform on October 31, 1982. Her performance attracted the attention of new labels, which approached her for the possibility of developing in Japan. Notable among them was EMI Studios Singapore, as it was seeking to replace the recently departed diva Tracy Huang. The vocal similarity between Chen and Huang, along with Chen's ability to perform in multiple languages, made her a compelling candidate for EMI.

Chen’s sweet-16 finish on the world stage was a notable early-career success. More importantly, she considered the Tokyo trip a turning point. In a 1985 interview, she admitted that she had been unprepared for the scale and intensity of the competition. Witnessing top-level pop music gave her a new perspective. Already a high-achiever, Chen’s ambitions were no longer confined to competing in Taiwan.

She signed with EMI and started a new chapter in her career. 

Teresa Teng and Sarah Chen were just five years apart. Both began as child singers, debuting 1967: Teng at 14, Chen at just 9. Sharing vocal suitability, they performed 19 of the same songs, mostly holiday and traditional Taiwanese songs. Teng and Chen were both talented linguistically, recording in Mandarin, Taiwanese, Cantonese, Japanese (mainly Teng), and English (mainly Chen). 

Their career paths, however, diverged significantly. Teresa Teng turned professional from the start, recording over 200 songs as a teenager. She dominated Mandopop in the 1970s and entered the Japanese market in the mid-1970s, where she remained a major figure until her death in 1995. Teng recorded over 1100 songs; everything she touched turned gold. A cultural icon, Teng wielded extraordinary influences spanning the Chinese-speaking world. Sharing a surname with China's leader Deng Xiaoping, she was affectionately called "Little Deng," the voice people secretly listened to at night, in contrast to the "Old Deng" they were required to hear by day. 

In contrast, Sarah Chen's early career progressed slowly. As a preteen, she was assigned adult-themed songs ill-suited for her age, which discouraged her from recording. When Chen turned pro at age 17, Teng's dominance meant that Chen couldn't simply sing as she pleased. While Teng could just sing, Chen had to forge a voice that's both authentic and distinct from Teng's, a nearly impossible task, like trying to differ from an identical twin. She began by imitating Teng, most notably in her failed 1977 album "Quietly Saying Good-Bye." It took years for her to shed traces of Teresa Teng. Chen remained obscure until 1982, when she finally broke through with a unique style all her own.

Perhaps to make room for others, Teresa Teng began winding down her Mandarin output in the early 1980s. By 1983, she had shifted focus to Japanese songs, having completed classical albums in Taiwanese, Cantonese, and ancient Chinese poetry, leaving space for new voices. Sarah Chen's rise coincided with this retreat: as Teng stepped back, Chen rapidly rose to prominence from 1983, becoming a dominating force in Mandopop through the mid-1990s. 

In July 1995, two-months after Teresa Teng's sudden death from a medical emergency, Sarah Chen was asked whether she would fill the void left behind. Having herself spent five-days unconscious in a hospital bed from an acute respiratory illness earlier that year, Chen replied, "I haven't thought about that. I am her fan. I met her twice. Whatever happens, I'll let fate decide."

That fate led to her quiet retirement. In December 1995, Sarah Chen recorded her farewell album Forever, Sarah in a studio in Singapore. There was no fanfare, no media blitz, no glamorous photos. She stepped away from music and the public view. 

Sarah Chen had big glass slippers to fill when she joined EMI in 1983, stepping into the vacancy left by the recent departure of established singer Tracy Huang. Chen inherited Huang’s EMI team, working with the composer duo Tan Jian-Chang and Xiao-Xuan, while continuing Huang’s tradition of performing in English. She performed in multiple languages and integrated Western and Eastern musical influences. Her music was important for breaking language and cultural barriers and bridging the divide between nations and people.

Sarah Chen's time with EMI was arguably her most productive, daring, diverse, and successful phase. Her enduring influence in Singapore and Malaysia originated from this period, when she took a deliberate approach to expand internationally. EMI made sure that Chen wasn't just a singer, but a product, and a phenomenon. They promoted her heavily in media and fan events across Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia. Armed by her beautiful singing, and aided by her handsome features and good will, Chen became a phenomenon.

In just three years, she released five Mandarin albums produced by Tan, three English albums produced by Reggie Verghese, a Lunar New Year celebration album, and award-winning TV theme songs. Totaling about 100 songs, these albums broke EMI sales records and won Chen her first major music award, the Golden Bell Best Female Singer Award. She became the fifth female singer to win this honor, five years after Teresa Teng became its first recipient.

Chen’s work during her EMI years was stunningly high in quality. Tan Jian-Chang, the most frequent collaborator of Sarah Chen’s career, took a backseat, and Chen received the recognition she deserved. 

But first, she needed a battle plan to conquer the world.

"To reach the summit, aim even higher." Sun Tzu’s The Art of War became Sarah Chen’s battle plan at EMI. A decade of hardships had built a toughness in her, softened only by her graceful musical persona. Chen’s recent Tokyo trip had given her a glimpse of the summit, but Teresa Teng remained active and new singers like Lin Hui-ping were emerging. There was no time to waste.

Armed with her elusive style, Sarah Chen applied a lesson from The Art of War and aimed above the summit. We’ve all heard the stories: how she demanded a re-recording after everyone else was satisfied, or how she regretted for years a botched live show where her partner failed to catch her in the final pose. She pursued perfection, and she was perfect.

These days, perfectionism is often seen as a flaw, a sign of insecurity, a path to burnout. While there is some truth to this, professional perfectionism is often necessary. The margin of error in highly competitive fields is razor-thin: slight inaccuracies can cause disasters (as in air traffic control), losses (as in the Olympics), or failed deals. The hyper-competitive music industry, which had already tested Sarah Chen for over a decade, left her with no choice but to strive for perfection.

Wasting no time, Sarah Chen released three perfectly made albums in 1983: Starry Sky, Song of the Ocean, and an English album The Right to Sing. The first, Starry Sky, also known as Harmonica’s Story, contained six songs composed by Tan, with poetic lyrics by Xiao-Xuan. The album was the beginning of Chen’s magical years of singing poetry, where love evoked images of drifting snow and loneliness was accompanied by one’s shadow.

The best-known song of the album, however, was Joseph Ye’s Autumn Fills My Heart, an extension of Chen’s success at Haishan Records. “What is left after passionate love?” the singer asks. That bittersweet melancholy, raw in the wake of a recent breakup, cut deep, as Chen moved from quiet sorrow in the early verses to heartbreaking high notes in the chorus.

Sarah Chen delivered one of her most memorable live performances of Autumn Fills My Heart at the Zong-Yi 100 in October 1983, when her album reached #7 for the year. Typically calm and gentle on stage, Chen gave a rare display of anguish as she sang the final verse “Holding back tears, constantly looking back; eyes full with spring’s new green, yet autumn sorrow fills my heart.” The poor sound quality of the recording couldn’t mask the brilliance of that performance. After a single immortal moment like that, I would have retired.

While retirement was far off, Chen chose to re-record Autumn Fills My Heart in her farewell album 12 years later. Sung in a lower key, the re-recording sounds more resigned. To a listener, unlike the original, where the younger Chen was fighting against autumn sorrow, the re-recording allowed it to linger. 

Chen retired after that second recording. She had long achieved immortality in music; she needed to stop the pain each performance of the song inflicted.

Song of the Ocean, released just three months after Starry Sky, was a Mandarin album with a distinct Western feel. More than half of its tracks had foreign melodies, including a Chinese version of Irene Cara’s What a Feeling. The origins of the other foreign songs were obscure, making the album feel original to Chen’s audience, which had now expanded far beyond Taiwan.

The title song of the album, an original Mandarin composition by the Tan-Xuan duo, was an outlier in Sarah Chen’s repertoire. She unleashed her full vocal power to match the strength of the ocean as it roared its stories of lovers’ unfulfilled promises. Even the sound of crashing waves, enhanced by industrial-strength fans in the studio, could not drown out Chen’s resounding voice. The impact was unmistakable: You want to scream with her as she had a rare moment of letting go her vocal restraints.

Nearly a decade later, Chen said that Song of the Ocean remained one of her personal favorites. The sheer freedom of singing at full force made it a joy. The moment you think this isn’t the typical Sarah Chen, you realize how much restraint and finesse she exercised in her other songs. Song of the Ocean was easier to sing than Red Dust, and probably more fun too.

Sarah Chen’s first serious English album, The Right to Sing (1983), was her most daring, shattering the graceful and gentle young woman persona she had cultivated for years. The only saving grace was the language barrier, shielding her defiant side from reaching fans who were unfamiliar with English.

Besides the title song, which asserted her right to sing, live, and love on her terms, the album expressed feelings often forbidden for young women of her culture and era: a jealous lover, with a badass attitude, telling her partner she didn’t care to know his past affairs. Yes, all the songs were covers of English pop hits, reflecting a different culture from Chen’s. But Chen had accepted the challenge of performing them, risking years of careful image-building.

The album came at a time when rock and roll was on the rise in Asia. English albums were becoming popular in regions with significant English-speaking populations, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia. This trend saw many Asian singers performing in English, bridging the cultural and identity gaps that had dampened audiences’ enthusiasm for Western singers. Several top Taiwanese singers recorded English albums; Sarah Chen was not unique. While the long-term impact of these albums remains debatable, their commercial and cultural values at the time were undeniable, meeting the demand for English covers from singers that fans could more easily identify with. 

While producing an English album was unremarkable, the choice of songs was unusual, especially as they directly contrasted Sarah Chen’s established musical persona. Her willingness to perform them, and her success in doing so, was extraordinary. 

The truth is, Sarah Chen’s gentle image was just that, an image. Those close to her, such as Kay Huang, knew firsthand her determination and strong will. She fit these songs, much as she did years later when she became Taiwan’s “voice of urban women.” This defiant album, an outlier in her repertoire, was the first sign of her bold, independent musical persona, paving the way for her later adaptation in Mandopop. 

Chen recorded two other English albums of similar calibre, Miracle of Love (1987) and Hold Me Now (1988). Her later “transformation” in Mandarin songs was nothing new: her independent spirit was already evident in her English albums, where she performed many songs far outside cultural norms. Her later Mandarin "outliers" like the Dancing Light and Say You Love Me were quite normal in comparison. 

By 1984, Sarah Chen had found a winning formula; only a trophy was needed to crown her the queen of Mandopop. Song of the Ocean entered that year’s Golden Bell Awards competition, but rushed preparation doomed it in the early rounds. The task of winning the crown fell on her next album, Endless Love.

Of the three “Best Female Singer” awards Sarah Chen won in her career, her first, the 1985 Golden Bell Award, was the most significant. She seized it from Jeanette Wang, a three-time nominee, and Julie Sue, who was riding an unstoppable wave of fame from her explosive vocals. Wang would win the following year, and Sue the year after. Still remembering the previous year’s defeat, Sarah Chen could barely contain her anxiety as she also took the stage as a performer at the ceremony.

As all three nominees fixated their eyes on the hosts, the lady peaked into the envelope, saw the winner’s name, and gave a mysterious smile. Her co-host, too, gave a wry smile before slowly announcing the winner’s name, one character at a time. With each finalist having a different surname, the first syllable was enough. But when Sarah Chen heard “Chen,” she sat frozen, as if waiting to be convinced it was her not another “Chen” who had won. A second later, realizing she was the Chen Shu-Hua, she nearly fell out of her seat in shock and excitement.

I’ve never seen a more awkward Sarah Chen than in the moment: standing on the podium in an enormous purple gown, wiping away tears, clutching the Golden Bell trophy, going nearly speechless. Come on, say something, anything! Her words came out in a jumble. Those fleeting 30 seconds of fame were a blur. That brilliant mind, so adept at holding tongue twisters and conjuring up patronuses, suddenly went empty.  She even forgot to thank her mother, the one other person who had a rightful claim to that trophy.  

1985 began with great promise: Sarah Chen’s album Wandering the World shattered EMI’s sales records, even outselling Michael Jackson’s Thriller in Malaysia. In March, the Golden Bell Award officially crowned Sarah Chen a Mandopop diva. The girl was going places!

The excitement was palpable in Chen’s broadcast following the award, where she went on air to make up for the botched acceptance speech. This time, the words came effortlessly, with the most important being her heartfelt thanks to her mother. Chen also shared two secrets with her fans: her mother wanted her to focus on personal bell (hint: marriage), while her record label encouraged her to explore the Northeast Asian market of Japan.

Little did she know that her career was about to take a drastic turn; no, it would come to a sudden stop. 

In 1985, personnel changes at EMI led to the departure of Tan Jan-Chang, making Black Hair Turns White their final collaboration. Identified by advanced AI (GPT-4) in 2024 as a farewell album, Black Hair Turns White reached an unfathomable emotional depth. According to Tan Jian-Chang, the recording process was challenging, as the usually composed Sarah Chen was overwhelmed with emotion. It took multiple takes to complete the title track, which still retained her quiet sobs.

The most difficult song, Final Good-Bye, was a tribute to the composer, Chen’s Japanese friend Mari Kurihara (栗原真理), who had tragically passed away in a car accident three-years ago. The lyrics, written by Lo Wen-Zhong, was Mari comforting her loved ones, urging them to carry on, telling them that her love would always be with them, like stars in the sky. Only Sarah Chen, with the depth of love she felt for her friend, could have expressed the emotions the song demanded.

The album was later deemed too melancholic by Chen’s new collaborators. While that may be true, it was never meant for the masses. It was deeply personal, created at a crossroads as Chen considered leaving the music industry. 

And I cannot tell you how much comfort Final Good-Bye had brought me. 

Tan’s departure from EMI abruptly ended a highly productive collaboration after just three years. Sarah Chen, however, was bound by a long-term contract that limited her options, complicating her subsequent work. Most of the 100 songs from this era lack long-term support, posing a serious risk of being lost. Their inaccessibility also distorted perception of Chen’s career, leaving a crack for damaging narratives that emerged in later years.

Around this time, Chen also suffered a painful personal loss. A long-term relationship reportedly ended amid public rumor and media exploitation. While this was never publicly addressed in full, clippings from the period suggest it was heart-breaking for Chen. 

The singer, newly awarded but reeling from professional and personal setbacks, was asked a pointed question at a Malaysian press conference about her private life. Unable to fully contain the heaviness of her heart, Chen gave a cryptic and defiant answer, "I believe that Heaven is fair," and refused to say more. 

By some accounts, Chen considered retiring from singing, a conjecture supported by the melancholic farewell sentiment in Black Hair Turns White. With over 260 songs, 20 albums, record-breaking sales, and a “Best Female Singer” award, she could have retired without regret. Yet she had much more to give. Her love for music remained strong, and she was at her best. The Golden Bell win signaled the beginning, not the end, of the greatest years of her career.

In the end, that strong desire to create the best art won over her wish to step back. Chen would have to navigate uncertainties, battling on with her hands tied behind her by EMI’s long contract.

Sarah Chen was forced to take a break from recording and traveled the world. In 1986, she held a concert in Malaysia, performing in multiple languages, yielding a rare live recording of several new songs, including her first Cantonese song. She also tested the waters in Japan, but did not further pursue opportunities there, even though language was unlikely a barrier. After all, Teresa Teng had a dominating presence in Japan. It was hard to imagine Chen willingly stepping into Teng’s shadow once again.  

The 1986 Malaysia concert was Sarah Chen's rare, full-length concert with live recordings. Capitalizing on her popularity in Malaysia and her recent Golden Bell Awards, Chen went to Kuala Lumpur, performing at the Shangri-La Night Club during Lunar New Year. Over 10 days, she led multiple shows with slightly varied repertoires, including four new tracks never recorded elsewhere.

Malaysia, a multiple cultural and multilingual country, welcomed her warmly. Introduced as "the lady who took the 1985 Golden Bell Awards by a storm," Sarah Chen drew fans of all backgrounds. She performed in four languages, spoke to the audience in Mandarin and Cantonese, and welcomed them backstage after the shows.

In what appeared to be a lounge with writing on a whiteboard, nervous fans were warmly received by Sarah Chen and her mother. The singer, exhausted from the draining performance, greeted them with kindness and grace, chatting and posing for photos, and concealing her fatigue in all but one photo.

The goodwill she showed cemented their lifelong devotion. Over the next four decades, they preserved her memory, collected clippings and reports about her, and prayed for her as she retreated from public life. As I wrote these lines 39 years later, they shared with me the photos they had taken, capturing a stunningly beautiful performer. Their recollections of how Chen and her mother received them simultaneously lionized and humanized the mother and daughter in ways neither her record labels nor media had managed.

And Sarah Chen did not forget them. The heart-felt thanks she gave at the concert, her vow to always remember them, turned into action. The English song she performed at the Malaysia concert, "Say You, Say Me," foreshadowed her career-defining album, "Talk to You, Listen to You." 

Thank you, Malaysia. 

Few people would consider Sarah Chen an idol star. As a new fan drawn entirely by the substance of her music, I was shocked to discover that Chen, for much of her career, was idolized for her glamorous looks. News stories and magazine articles from around 1983 to 1996 show a stunningly beautiful singer in a multitude of fashionable outfits and poses.

These stories, all favorable to Chen, said little about her music. Half consisted of photos of her looking otherworldly; the other half was filled with speculation about her romantic life. The toxicity of an image-based culture, one that, on the surface, seemed friendly to Chen and even elevated her to goddess status, was striking. In hindsight, one fortunate aspect of Chen’s slow rise to stardom was that it spared her younger self from that toxic culture, where female singers were treated like flower vases, waiting to be transplanted into a man’s household as wives.

The 1980s saw a major shift toward visual culture, where singers were no longer just vocalists heard on the radio but idols in color photographs. By 1983, when Sarah Chen joined EMI, she already had several years of experience hosting TV shows and appearing in concerts. The daughter of an interior designer and sister of a makeup artist, Chen stood at the forefront of fashion. She appeared to embrace image-based marketing, frequently changing her look with each album release. The photos on her album covers were not just static portraits; they reflected how she actually appeared during the corresponding periods. Her skillful ability to dramatically alter her appearance made it easy to create a collage of Chen that, to someone unfamiliar with her, might look like entirely different people.

One of Taiwan’s best vocalists, perhaps the best, Sarah Chen didn’t shy away from showing her handsome features. Nor could she afford to. Her lackluster early career, despite her beautiful singing, made it clear that her idolized looks would boost her music, at least in the short term. In her 30-year career, Chen was notable for boldly changing her image, successfully adapting to shifts in societal expectations, musical style, and age. These changes were strategic. In an industry where new idols emerged rapidly, reinventing herself over and over again became a necessity. 

While this strategy may have paid off for some time, it also proved detrimental. First, Sarah Chen was fundamentally a talent-driven singer. Her music had an essential core, supported by her stunning vocals and an unmatched level of emotional depth, even when she was young. Songs like "Fog" and "Seven-Mile Fragrance," recorded in her early twenties, revealed an old soul expressing a deep longing that no one else could have carried. Yet none of Chen’s idolized images could match the depth of her music. Emphasizing her glamorous looks may have inadvertently led to her music being under-appreciated. 

Second, while the changing images may attract new audience, they also created confusion about who Sarah Chen was. What was her core identity in music? Was each previous version a failure that demanded a new one? What was the essence of Sarah Chen? That essence, so compelling in her music, was often lost in her ever-changing images. 

Finally, the idol culture ultimately ended Sarah Chen’s career. Even though Chen was tough as nails, she could not withstand the pressure to appear ever more glamorous as her popularity soared. By the early 1990s, she had succumbed to that pressure, becoming gravely ill after taking a damaging weight-loss drug then popular in Taiwan. The experience plunged her into an existential crisis, resolved only when she abandoned music.

No longer willing to cooperate with a system that had harmed her emotionally and physically, Sarah Chen nonetheless harbored no resentment. In July 1995, just months before her exit from the entertainment industry, she found it amusing that fans at a media event endorsed her as an idol star. "Me? An idol star? That’s lovely! After all, talent-driven idol stars are so few in number!"

Decades have now passed, and the point about being an idol star has become moot. What remains is Sarah Chen’s music, not her idolized image. In the absence of the singer herself, or any visuals to cloud her songs, it has become easier to appreciate Sarah Chen’s music for what it is: a beautiful dreamland of songs filled with unmatched emotional depth, human experience, and wisdom. 

In 1986, EMI ended its partnership with Four-Ocean Records in Taiwan, shifting Sarah Chen’s music production to Rock Records, a rising label that would become a powerhouse in Taiwan. Although the four Mandarin albums produced over the next three years were dual-labeled with EMI and Rock Records, Chen remained under contract with EMI, which maintained strict control over the rights of her music and limited her options. The restrictions were excessive. Chen couldn’t sing a line in the group performance of Happy Paradise without label approval.

Forced to ride on two boats at once, Chen navigated treacherous waters during a tumultuous period of her career. EMI, beset by its own problems, was no longer fully behind her. Rock Records, meanwhile, had their own people to promote: the songwriters and producers. While highly valued, Chen was more a tool than a product to them.

Musician Jonathan Lee, by then a Rock Records official, set the tone for the power dynamics Sarah Chen was to face: "In my official role as Rock Record personnel, I welcome Sarah Chen to the Rock Records family. Sarah Chen should have a new beginning. She will shine more brightly. Rock Records will help her achieve that." 

As the two boats sailed in separate directions, Sarah Chen inevitably fell into deep water, drowning in success that was no longer hers. 

The erasing of Sarah Chen’s achievements from her EMI era wouldn’t be the end of the world. It wasn’t the first time that she had seen her work disappear: she had already lost most of her first 100 recordings. Yet she didn’t need to rest on her laurels; the next thing would be even greater. And it was.

The six Mandarin albums Sarah Chen released from 1987 to 1991 contained some of Mandopop’s biggest hits: Dream to Awakening, Red Dust, Gate of Love, and Be Wise, Be Easy. In 1991, Chen won Taiwan’s Best Female Singer Award for the second time with A Lifetime of Waiting. Some saw this as a consolation prize for her stunning loss to Tsai Chin the year before, when Dream to Awakening was left out. But unlike the excitement the award had sparked six years earlier, Chen had fallen ill and left the ceremony before finding out the results.

During this period, Chen wasn’t just great; she was practically immortal. Her success was so extraordinary that it soon became contentious as to whom the credit belonged. The damaging "transformation" theory, which attributed her success to the men she worked with, took hold. 

As hidden problems in her work deepened, a health crisis struck a major blow. That journey began with adapting to the changing winds at Rock Records. 

Sarah Chen’s transition to Rock Records brought three major changes: collaborators, the music production process, and song style. These changes created both new opportunities and set up minefields.

Collaborators. As a rising label, Rock Records was staffed by young talent. Instead of working with established composers, Sarah Chen found herself the most senior member. While working with young people offered fresh opportunities, it also introduced unique challenges. Many stood to gain from her success to bolster their own reputations. Though she was the star singer, her collaborators were unlikely to settle for a supporting role. 

Music production. By the late 1980s, Rock Records had adopted the Artist and Repertoire (A&R) approach, where composers wrote songs tailored for specific artists, ensuring a cohesive match between singers and their repertoire. While this fostered closer ties between singers and songwriters, it also complicated Chen’s already delicate work relationships. She would have coffee and dinner with songwriters as they tried to know her. Feeling uncomfortable at times, she brought her mother along, who helpfully drank the alcohol served to Chen. What was meant to be a collaborative process became a delicate balancing act. 

Style of songs. If Chen sang poetry at EMI, she told stories at Rock Records. To appeal to the masses, lyrics were more direct, resembling Western pop music rather than traditional Taiwan MinYao. Some were even thematically connected: her 1988 Mandopop song Please Forgive Me mirrored the theme of her 1987 English song If You ever Had a Broken Heart. Some of Chen's longtime friends grew uneasy over her musical direction, urging her to stop working with the new team. Whether she had the freedom to leave was unclear, but she stayed. She was already a veteran at telling stories in her English songs. The only change was doing it in Mandarin.

Vocal adaptation. As her songs shifted from poetry to storytelling, Chen also adapted her vocal delivery. She credited Niu Da-Ke, producer of her first album with Rock Records, Waiting for the Storm (1987), for helping her with the adaptation. She made a subtle change, slightly opening up her voice, bringing it closer to her natural tone. That style, similar to what she had used years earlier in Sunset Follows Me Home, would stay with her for the rest of her career.

The first signs of Sarah Chen’s troubles emerged just as she appeared to be on the rise. Heart of a Woman, her second album with Rock Records, came with album descriptions that relegated her to a secondary role. Unlike her EMI-era albums, which centered on her feelings, experiences, and contributions, Heart of a Woman cast Chen as a passive participant, as if she were merely cooperating in the producer’s grand vision.

The album description stated: Jonathan Lee (the producer) made Sarah Chen adopt a more mature and nuanced emotional style, which he used to shape her pure voice into one that conveyed greater individuality. It is Lee’s new singing method; it’s also Chen’s new transformation. 

In later interviews, Chen revealed that she had many disagreements with Lee while recording this album, the first of their three collaborations. She had her own way of singing; Lee wanted something different. Stubborn by her own admission, Chen was unlikely to compromise, especially after years of perfecting her singing. Just by listening to the songs in the album, you wouldn’t notice any transformation in Chen; she sounded much as she had in her previous albums. 

Ding Xiao-Wen, another collaborator at the time, recalled hearing Lee singing Don't Say Pity while composing it. Ding said that she could never have imagined how the final version would turn out. Sarah Chen’s interpretation was entirely different. 

It is ironic that Heart of a Woman and the next two albums would later be seen as the defining trio that marked the rise of independent, urban women in Taiwan, with Sarah Chen being their de facto representative and voice. Yes, on the surface, her new songs advocated for female independence. But even as she sang about independence, she was losing hers in plain sight.

Like in a nightmare, slowly drifting away from reality over time, until Chen’s voice became so suppressed that she all but disappeared from her own albums. By the early 2000s, when Rock Records released the documentary A Letter to Sarah, she no longer had a voice. She was described as the subject of a transformation, the one who fulfilled the producer’s dream. Fast forward to 2025, taking over Chen's voice, her official YouTube channel was still making posts highlighting the producers. 

The “voice of urban women,” Sarah Chen never seemed proud of that title. Her interview with Liu Jie in 1990 suggests that she understood very clearly that no matter what she sang, declared, or advocated, she was playing a rigged game, a game in which women were placed exactly where men wanted them, doing what men told them to do. Judging by how the internet has spent the past 30 years diminishing Sarah Chen while elevating her male collaborators, the game was never meant to end. 

A fierce fighter and half a son to her mother, Chen wasn’t going to keep cooperating in a rigged game. She chose the only way to maintain her autonomy: leaving the music industry and staying out of a public that cheers the game on.

Tomorrow, Will You Still Love Me, a collection of 10 stylistically diverse songs, was once my favorite, until the controversial production process soured it. The producer had taken the A&R approach to an extreme, aiming to write songs based on Sarah Chen’s personal affairs. Chen, who had long separated her private life from her musical one, was understandably resistant to the forced merger of the two worlds. She said little, leaving the songwriters to fill in the blanks. 

Despite her reluctance to tie her personal affairs with songwriting, Chen poured her heart into singing, making this album her most powerful work. After all, the songs were, in part, based on her story. The title track, a favorite of both Chen and her mother, was recorded three times: twice in 1988 (apparently a drunk and a sober version) and once in 1995. The beautiful 1995 music video offered one interpretation of the song’s ambiguous lyrics: a tale of forbidden love. The 1988 sober version (judged by the precise control she exerted) was Sarah Chen at her very best. Her calm and gentle voice only made the anguish and resignation all the more unbearable.

Buried on the B2 side of the cassette was a Sarah Chen masterpiece: Boisterous Street. Though excluded from any Sarah Chen Classics compilations, it is one of her most captivating songs. It evokes vivid images of a woman waiting at a street corner at dusk, longing to be noticed by the person she loves as indifferent faces pass by. Chen’s performance was crushing. Known for her precise articulation, she deliberately “ate” some syllables, whispering the first word of several lines. As the song built toward the chorus, Chen, who could easily deliver powerful high notes, instead revealed a vulnerable side of her voice, likely to mirror the waiting woman’s fragile state of mind. Those attuned to Chen’s emotions were left shattered. She wrecked us. 

In November 1989, Sarah Chen released Talk to You, Listen to You, her second album in collaboration with Jonathan Lee. The album shattered sales records, becoming the first in Taiwan to reach 1 million sales and sending shockwaves through its society. While all of the songs were well received, the title track, Dream to Awakening, was pivotal to its success. Chen was crowned the “voice of urban women” and became the “diva of Mandopop divas.”

Many years later, the song remains a top Mandopop hit on YouTube, amassing over 100 million views in the past decade and surpassing Teresa Teng’s top hit, The Moon Represents My Heart. Had YouTube been accessible in China, home to 98% of the world’s Mandarin-speaking population, Dream to Awakening could have reached 4-5 billion views, comparable to the top hits of Taylor Swift and Adele, decades after its singer had all but disappeared.  

For many listeners, Dream to Awakening is synonymous with Sarah Chen. Acting as a counselor, she comforts those in heartache, urging them to let go and move on. Though well written, the song’s direct message could have felt forced or condescending if not carefully delivered. Its success hinged on Sarah Chen’s interpretation.

According to the broadcaster Ma Shifang, Chen’s albums coincided with a period of societal changes in Taiwan. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, women were moving to urban areas and taking white-collar jobs. Though just as capable as men, they had to work harder for the same recognition, making sacrifices men didn’t. As a career woman who sacrificed her personal life, Sarah Chen became the symbol of urban working women. Her message of letting go resonated with those seeking independence from love and family obligations.

Yet, the song’s impact extended far beyond Taiwan and that era. It was credited for sparking a trend in Mandopop, shifting the focus away from romantic love as life’s centerpiece. It also became a timeless classic for those recovering from heartbreak. Its reception, however, was not always positive. I had mentioned in the preface, the song’s forced message initially turned me into an anti-fan of Sarah Chen. And I wasn’t alone; the song failed to garner her the Golden Melody Awards in 1990. Even Chen couldn’t entirely eliminate the condescension. But she tried, and its popularity proved that most listeners found her performance convincing.

Chen was convincing because, to an extent, the songs in the 1989 album were a continuation of Tomorrow, Will You Still Love Me, an album based on Chen’s personal experience (footnote 2). Dream to Awakening was the next step – the recovery from the breakup – followed by Walk Your Own Way, even if she might Still Miss You, because Love Is the Only Reason, and so on. If Chen found personal significance in Tomorrow, Will You Still Love Me, she was also speaking from her heart in Talk to You, Listen to You. 

In March 1990, EMI ended its collaboration with Rock Records in Taiwan and directed the latter to destroy albums for which they had no exclusive rights. Rock Records acquired the rights to Chen's 1989 album Talk to You, Listen to You and rebranded it overseas. Released as Dream to Awakening in mainland China, it was Sarah Chen's debut in the vast Chinese market. However, EMI retained the rights to her previous three albums, which were not re-released. The lack of long-term support for Chen's EMI work, together with the rebranding of her Rock Records work, may have contributed to the misconception, especially in mainland China, that Sarah Chen's career began in 1989 with Rock Records. 

By 1990, Sarah Chen’s contract with EMI finally ended, briefly opening the door for her to sign with other labels. She met with several parties, but her recent extraordinary success, coupled with a looming health crisis, kept her at Rock Records. A decade earlier, facing career obstacles, she would have undoubtedly broken free. But now, success on the surface and mounting strain beneath had trapped her in place. Yes, it’s that feeling of thriving in adversity, fading in comfort.

Yet Chen was anything but comfortable. Footage from the early 1990s shows an increasingly gaunt figure. Her declining health became alarming in videos of her 1990 album A Lifetime of Waiting. The title song, one of very few where you can hear Chen breathing through lines, is both breathtakingly moving and concerning. You want to cry out: Please don’t wait for a lifetime, please take care!

Chen became gravely ill following an extreme weight-loss episode. Yet she kept it to herself. In poor health and under immense strain, she left Taiwan with her mother, beginning a long and painful road to recovery.

One evening, as I wandered onto a Manhattan pier, the glimmering moonlight and bustling traffic reminded me of Sarah Chen’s song Night Stroll, recorded in the U.S. during her recovery. I recalled the question she once asked the host of The Voice of Chinese Americans: How long does it take to know New York? 

Night Stroll appeared on Chen’s final album of this phase, Be Wise, Be Easy. The title track was written by Cheng Hua-Jiuan as a friendly reminder to the wise Chen to prioritize her own well-being. 

The well-intended message was equally well received. Having survived her ordeal, life had taken on a new meaning. The singer who had given so much to her music was free, free from her love: music.

She was to leave the music industry.

To many listeners, Sarah Chen is synonymous with her top hit Dream to Awakening, one of the greatest Mandopop performances of all time. But Chen had been singing about dreams throughout her career. In fact, she sang over 100 dream-related songs, including 19 in English. The Queen of Dreamland, Chen captured our drifting between reality and imagination. Dreams allow us to escape from harsh reality, taking us to the far corners of our minds, where we are free to imagine and turn dreams into reality.

The Mandopop diva was herself a dreamer, reshaping reality until her dreams came true. As a child, Sarah Chen wanted to join a choir, only to be told by the judge that her vocals were terrible and she should develop other interests. Under the ill advice of some medieval-level science, she swallowed raw eggs, which likely sickened her into becoming a "drug kettle." But she proved stronger than Salmonella, fighting her way to a first-place finish in a national singing contest and scoring her first single, all before the age of 10.

The reward of that adventure led to bigger dreams: a dream to go on TV, a dream to become a professional singer, a dream to compete on the world’s stage, and a dream to win the Golden Bell.

 “People will triumph over fate” was once Sarah Chen’s motto. Convinced she could overcome any obstacle, Chen swallowed repeated failures like the unpalatable raw eggs, digging her heels into the sand until her dreams came true. For those dreams, she battled hard: becoming a singing dictionary, singing in English and four other languages, sporting the most fashionable outfits, putting up with toxic work relationships, and bearing the most intrusive media inquiries with divine grace.

For the construction of her Dreamland, Chen paid a hefty price. “Fate,” as she would later say, “is an invisible line, pulling us in unpredictable directions.” As Chen fulfilled her dreams, the ever-growing pressure to outcompete herself took a toll. By 1995, after twice surviving near-death illnesses, Chen shared her new perspective: “I don’t look back, neither do I dream about the future. I just want to properly manage the present.”

Having once considered herself a workaholic, Sarah Chen began to let go of dreams that had increasingly become nightmares. But the Queen of Dreamland was not suddenly going to give up on living. She sounded upbeat, nearly invincible, as she prepared to leave her Dreamland behind: “If ill health is the biggest obstacle in life, now that I have experienced it, what else can I not face?”

“Life is but a dream, drifting away like light clouds,” Chen sang in a 1988 song. That may be true of life, except that Chen had immortalized her dreams, gifting us mortals with dreamy songs that accompany us through the night. Thirty years later, her Dreamland remains as sturdy and beautiful as ever, even as the Queen had long abdicated her throne. 

Just as there is no easy answer to when her career began, the end of Sarah Chen’s career was equally complicated. Officially, her final album, Paradise Lost, was released on Jan. 13, 1998, after which she produced no further work. Her penultimate album, Forever, Sarah, had come out more than two years earlier, on Dec. 22, 1995. And there you have it, a thirty-year career spanning from Water Wagon Girl to Paradise Lost. 

However, some sources suggest Forever, Sarah was actually Chen’s final recording. She had reportedly completed most of Paradise Lost before then, but concerns from her record label over its possible poor performance, along with delayed post-production work for the album’s movie theme song, led to its much later release.

Several clues support this interpretation, placing Chen’s retirement around New Year’s 1996. First, Forever, Sarah was unmistakably a farewell album, re-recording nine of her songs alongside new ones that completed her musical journey, a final tribute to her mom, Tan and Xuan, and her fans. Second, in a later interview, Johnny “Bug” Chen, the album’s producer, expressed regret that he hadn’t realized their work together would be Sarah Chen’s last. Third, when Forever, her first R&B album, was released in 1995, Chen had stated that it took her three years to complete. However, later interviews with its producer, David Tao, suggested that it took just over a year. Since Tao was not involved in Paradise Lost, this discrepancy implies that Chen had worked on two albums over those three years. 

But as with the start of her career, does it matter exactly when it ended?

Placing the end of Chen’s career at Forever, Sarah casts her legacy in a completely different light than ending it with Paradise Lost. The widely accepted narrative is that Sarah Chen’s career ended after her mother’s unexpected passing in 1998, shortly after Paradise Lost was released. Many, including former colleagues, attributed her withdrawal to this loss. Her mother, already criticized for allegedly discouraging Chen from dating within the music industry, was further vilified, even in death, for Chen’s decision to cut ties with the industry. This damaging interpretation was totally unfounded.

As noted earlier, evidence suggests that Forever, Sarah was Chen's final recording, allowing her two precious years to travel and spend time with her mother (and they did).  The album, carefully planned as a farewell, shows that Sarah Chen remained in control of her career, including when and how to end it. In 1996, she won the Golden Melody Best Female Singer Award one final time, going out with a bang!

Sarah Chen’s departure was not a reaction but a calculated move. A brilliant strategist (perhaps I should say “strategists,” as her mother was clearly part of it), the "half-Wuxia" singer was to take a lesson from The Art of War when planning her retirement:

“Those who calculate more will win; those who calculate less will not.”

Chen made deep calculations as she lay in pain from her illness in 1991.

Sarah Chen’s first move toward retirement was to fulfill her long-time wish of reinterpreting classic Taiwanese songs. She had always wanted to connect with her Taiwanese-speaking grandmother. The idea had been with her for three years, but in 1992, after recovering from illness, she finally had a chance to bring it to life.

The twelve songs on this album were among the most beautiful Chen had ever recorded. Perhaps because I don’t understand Taiwanese and only have a vague idea of the lyrics, I find the gentle, loving spirit within the songs even more compelling. This album became the next significant collection of Taiwanese classics after Teresa Teng’s Fujian Famous Songs in the 1980s. It was Chen’s effort to preserve Taiwanese music heritage, a gift to grandmother and her Taiwanese-speaking fans. 

In the summer of 1992, Sarah Chen joined her Rock Records colleagues on a concert tour in China, partially fulfilling her wish to hold a concert. She was a latecomer to the vast mainland China market; Teresa Teng and Julie Sue had established much earlier and stronger presences there. Yet the audience was receptive, having already been introduced to Chen’s Dream to Awakening and Red Dust. Armed with two new hits, So Transparent Is My Heart and Question, she became an instant sensation.

However, Chen’s late emergence in China led to a distorted perception of her career. She became strongly associated with Jonathan Lee, as every song she performed live there was written by him (he was on the tour). Lee did not shy away from taking credit for their collaboration, articulating his role in transforming Chen from a singer of traditional melancholic tunes to the independent voice of urban women. Chen chose not to counter that publicly. 

Sarah Chen’s second most awkward moment (besides the 1985 Golden Bell Awards) came during a 1993 interview with Shanghai TV. Instead of asking about her music, the host asked her to discuss Jonathan Lee. Staring at the ceiling, Chen paused for a long time, as if at a loss for words. But unlike her stunned silence at the Golden Bell, this time she seemed more conflicted about what to say than about drawing a blank.

She should have been better prepared; this wasn’t the first time she faced this question. A year earlier, both Gui Ya-Lei and The Voice of Chinese Americans had asked the same thing. 

Some questions are simply wrong; they have no good answers, and Chen gave none.

Sarah Chen had an unfulfilled wish for Sanmao, the free-spirited writer who had influenced a generation of readers. Sanmao scripted the 1990 film Red Dust, whose theme song, written by Lo Ta-Yu, became Sarah Chen’s signature work. When Sanmao passed away tragically in 1991, Chen had fallen sick. 

As she had done a decade earlier with her friend Mari, when she sang Mari's song Final Good-Bye, Chen turned her grief for Sanmao into music Sanmao had written. In 1994, she released a cover of Sanmao’s classic song Dreamland. Originally performed by Chiy Yu and Michelle Pan, the song was a beloved duet, not easily surpassed. But outdoing the original was never Sarah Chen’s goal. She needed to honor Sanmao and come to terms with the loss of a literary giant whose work led to her own masterpiece.

The hope and warmth in Chen’s voice were palpable as she gave life to Sanmao’s lyrics. Everyone has a dreamland in their heart. What do you plot in it? Peaches, plums, or spring flowers? 

As I listen to the song, I dream of Sanmao planting something secret in the dreamland of another world, surrounded by flowers, books, music, and love.

One of the most versatile singers of all time, Sarah Chen wasn’t done innovating. It took her three years to produce the two R&B albums. The 1995 Forever is considered Taiwan’s first R&B album. It was later complemented by Paradise Lost. They are Chen’s gift to the next generation of musicians.

Far ahead of their time, the albums received cautious enthusiasm. Some songs were well received, while others fell flat. Even Tarcy Su, an informal protégé of Chen, questioned her new musical direction, believing Chen’s singing was more compelling in her earlier Mandopop hits.

While the timing of Sarah Chen's R&B albums may be debated, there’s no doubt they were musically more advanced than her earlier work. In fact, decades later, when my playlist mixed Sarah Chen, Teresa Teng, Taylor Swift, and Adele, the contrast across centuries was striking, except for Chen’s two R&B albums, which felt in line with the modern Western pop music. They were truly ahead of their time. 

Sarah Chen had fulfilled all but one wish, saying Good-Bye. Her love for music was eternal, but music had taken a toll on her heath and autonomy. Her final wish was to hold a concert tour, but a severe illness in early 1995 changed her plan. 

Chen chose solitude to break up with the love that had defined her life. She bid farewell in a studio in Singapore, re-recording nine songs that held deep personal significance, from Autumn Farewell (1980) with Haishan Records, to Black Hair Turns White (1985) with Tan Jian-Chang, to Tomorrow, Will You Still Love Me (1988) with Bobby Chen. She then completed The Story of a Child (1980) with a new song, The Girl Has Grown Up, as an expression of love and gratitude to her mother. Her duet with Leslie Cheung, Good to be Faithful, honored the many duet partners she had sung with, while the movie theme song Everlasting Love wrapped up her career as a theme song artist.

Where did she find the strength to summon the brightest patronus for these recordings, knowing it would take her to a point of no return? A singer who had long practiced the art of concealing pain behind her music, Sarah Chen could not suppress a faint cry in Autumn Farewell. She was, after all, ending her career, breaking up with the love that had consumed her since childhood. 

We all wish she would stay, and I believe she wanted to stay. But I also think she had to leave.

The album closed with Hold Me. As Chen finished her last line, "Please hold me tightly at this moment of separation," the song transitioned into a long instrumental segment. The sounds of nature filled the final minute, with spring water and chirping birds, as if she had stepped into a new world of serenity.

I hope she found peace. Judging from her bright demeanor in the rare public appearances that followed, she did, at least for a while.

Several years after Sarah Chen left the music circle, unfounded rumors briefly broke her silence. In a rare phone interview with Matilda Tao in 2003, she surprised many by stating that she had never counted herself out of the entertainment industry. My situation is too complicated to explain, she said. Perhaps one day, I’ll meet with the media and explain the true side. Speaking of the continued support from her fans, Chen said, "I am grateful. I give my blessings."

Encouraged by the possibility of her return, Rock Records produced a documentary, A Letter to Sarah, hoping to draw her back. Colleagues, mostly men, appeared on camera, praising her extraordinary voice. However, renewed discussions about how she had been transformed, along with unwarranted criticism of her efforts to separate her personal and professional lives, derailed the attempt. A later, altered TV version of the documentary added fuel to the original, criticizing the mother-daughter collaboration and blaming Chen's mother for her departure. The two damaging letters received no counter-responses, leaving embers for persistent rumors.

Chen was never heard from again. She cut ties with former colleagues but remained silent, even as baseless rumors continued to circulate. She has stepped into a spiritually different world, one without hate, where peace is eternal, and where patronuses return to nature. 

Decades have passed, yet a lingering sadness remain among fans who have missed Sarah Chen for so long without knowing if she is well. Unable to reach her, Luo Yi-Rong, the composer of her breakthrough song Sunset Follows Me Home, left a message on a YouTube video of their other collaboration Moon Carries My Love, asking how she was and sending his best wishes. Tens of thousands of fans did the same on her music videos.

But we know it was for the love of music that Sarah Chen had devoted her life. 

And it was for that same love that she chose to walk away.

That love for music, as fundamental as any human need, binds us forever to Sarah Chen’s songs. 

Sarah Chen’s music journey was never hers alone; it belonged to both mother and daughter. Nor was it a journey about romantic love, despite the countless ballads she sang. What she embodied, or rather, what they embodied, was life’s strongest bond: the mother-daughter bond. Only mothers understand the cruelty of the world their daughters are born into, and only daughters grasp the pain their mothers went through. Even when one leaves, love binds them between heaven and earth.

Where does music come from? Why do we have specialized brain regions for it? Why do we crave for it as we do food? Some say music reduces conflict, replacing wars with celebrations. But I believe it begins with a mother’s whisper, the lullabies she sings, the love we felt before we even understood her words.