Sarah Chen Memory Gate Journal

 「陈淑桦记忆的门」期刊

August 15，2025 ｜ Past Issues 前期

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From Album 18 of Sarah Chen Music Memoir

Sarah Chen’s third EMI album, The Right to Sing, was released in December 1983. It was her first serious English-language album, produced by Singapore’s Reggie Verghese. Chen covered Western pop music with an array of bold, even outrageous, songs that challenged the societal norms of her culture and era. This was the beginning of Sarah Chen taking on a bold musical persona, several years before the same adaptation in her Mandopop albums. The language barrier was her only protection, keeping most listeners from grasping how defiant the lyrics were. The album also fulfilled Chen’s second wish since entering the music industry.

The title track asserted her right to sing, to live, and to love, while the other songs revealed sides of her that defied expectations of young women from her culture: a jealous lover, having a badass attitude, saying crazy things while hiding away with a boy, telling her partner that she didn’t care about his previous romance. Although these songs were English covers, Chen bravely accepted the challenge of performing them, with compelling results, directly contradicting her image in Mandopop as a gentle and graceful young woman.

When she started out, Sarah Chen had two wishes. The first, achieving platinum status, was recently fulfilled by Starry Sky and Song of the Ocean. Her second wish was to record an English album, in memory of the years she spent singing English songs in hotels. Before turning professional, Sarah Chen once helped her father with the interior design of a hotel in Taiwan owned by an American. In one room, a guitar caught her eye; she began playing and singing. The owner was impressed and offered her an evening singing job at the hotel. She did it for two years, earning her college tuition along the way.

In 1978, she recorded an English cover with the help of college friends, but the record label went out of business before the album was released; this early album was recently discovered. She continued to sing in English on stage, including at the 1982 World Popular Song Festival in Tokyo, and she held onto the dream of one day making an English album. The Right to Sing was that dream coming true. Its bold, defiant image reflected the real Sarah Chen far more than her gentle image in Mandarin songs.

Chen had planned to make only one English album, but it sold unexpectedly well, exceeding 200,000 copies and becoming her best-seller for a time. The success reflected her impeccable pronunciation and her years of experience performing English songs; Reggie Verghese was also a seasoned producer. Its popularity led to two more collaborations between Chen and Verghese in the following years, both achieving similar success.