To appreciate Sarah Chen's vocal quality, one only needs to listen to her singing part of a song with a group of other singers. The contrast is often startling, even when the adjacent singer is just as (or more) famous. Examples include "Happy Paradise" (快乐天堂1986), the "Pearl of the Orient" (东方之珠1991), and a 1988 Spring concert where she was the last singer to appear and sang "That Night You Were Drunk" (那一夜你喝了酒). As soon as Sarah Chen starts her line, the song suddenly becomes alive, as if a soul had entered it.
Magic wand, from Flickr
Emotive Singing without Drawing Attention to Herself
What makes Sarah Chen's emotive singing unique, given that everyone else sings with emotions? Let's consider the difference between Sarah Chen and Julie Su (苏芮). Su is an explosive soprano; Chen is a gentle mezzo-soprano. There's no doubt that Julie Su comes across as more emotional in her singing. However, Su (and many others)'s emotion is strongly attached to the singer, while Sarah Chen's emotion is absorbed by the song. It is as if she had passed part of herself to the song: as the song grows a soul and becomes alive, the singer is quietly receding to the background.
Sarah Chen's unique power to give emotions to the song without drawing attention to herself may be the reason why (1) her songs are so touching, (2) Sarah Chen herself is undervalued, and (3) she is impossible to imitate. How can you imitate her when she's not there for you to imitate? She went into the song, and if you also got into the song, the song would have you in it, not her.
Examples include 流光飞舞 (Dance of the Light), 秋意上心头 (Autumn Fills My Heart), Diamonds and Rust, 笑红尘 (The Mundane World), 滚滚红尘 (Red Dust), and 明天还爱我吗 (Tomorrow, Will You Still Love Me). No matter how many times you've listened to Sarah Chen's songs, they never get old. In fact, some of them are addictive. In "Diamonds and Rust," when she sang that last line that she'd already paid for the diamonds and rust, well, how can you move on to the next song? You must go back to the beginning to gather some more memories so that she can keep paying for those diamonds! This is an example from one of Sarah's lesser known songs, which lacks the cultural significance of Joan Baez's original. But Sarah Chen has the magic touch no matter what she's singing, and even when she sings in another language.
Sarah Chen has perfected the magic of singing directly to the hearts of her listeners. In the 2003 "A Letter to Sarah" documentary, Bobby Chen described her voice as "yanking at your heart," breaking all resistance. Johnny Chen said listening to her is a type of modern, high-class enjoyment. Her heart was pure (Chen Mei), her temperament was pure (Bobby Chen), her voice was clean (David Tao), she was calm and unexaggerated (Jonathan Lee), and she worked tirelessly to achieve these results (Kay Huang).
The magician's life is extended by the magical objects they create. As Sarah Chen's songs come alive and become immortal, she also achieves immortality. But if the mechanism works the same as in the physical world, then she has also given away a little bit of herself. To eventually walk away from this work must have taken a mountain of courage and an ocean of pain. Sarah is courageous. Hope the pain is gone.
So as we embrace the little fairies and genies in Sarah Chen's work, let's not forget to thank the magician herself.
