Cover Sandy Lam will return to the stage from April 27 to 29 at the Coliseum (Photo: courtesy of Sandy Lam and HKPhil)
Sandy Lam will return to the stage from April 27 to 29 at the Coliseum (Photo: courtesy of Sandy Lam and HKPhil)
1 / 1
Ahead of the Hong Kong singer and DJ’s concert at the Coliseum, Tatler revisits some of Sandy Lam’s milestones and favourite moments
Canto-pop diva Sandy Lam is one of the most celebrated names in Asia’s pop cultural scene, widely recognised for her catchy love songs, soulful voice and everchanging image onstage.
She started her musical career at 16 by working as a DJ at Commercial Radio. In the next four decades, she would go on to release more than 30 albums, with songs sung in Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese and English, and win prestigious awards, including the Golden Melody Awards for Best Female Singer in 2019 and the Hong Kong Film Awards’ Best Original Song in 2012.
As well as Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China and Japan, she has also accumulated a solid fanbase in the Chinese communities in Australia, Canada and the US.
The 58-year-old singer will return to the stage from April 27 to 29 at the Coliseum, where she will be joined by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra and a lineup of Canto-pop singers, including Frances Yip, Anthony Lun, Elisa Chan, Jay Fung, Cloud Wan and Oscar Tao, to perform at HKPhil 50 – Symphonic Reunion. This marks the first time she returns to the entertainment scene since her last public appearance at a live event in mainland China in 2020.
Ahead of her concert, Tatler revisits the key moments of Sandy Lam’s life and career.
Don’t miss: ‘See Her Again’ becomes first Asian drama to compete for Coup de Coeur award at Cannes’s MipDrama screenings
1. How she became Sandy Lam
Above Sandy Lam (Photo: courtesy of Sandy Lam and HKPhil)
Sandy Lam (Photo: courtesy of Sandy Lam and HKPhil)
1 / 1
Lam didn’t have an English name until she started studying at Marymount Secondary School, where her English teacher asked her for one. She thought of the lead character Sandy Olsson, played by actress Olivia Newton-John, in the 1978 musical Grease and named herself after the character.
2. How she started singing
In 1983, Lam was performing the song Crying in the Rain during an outdoor performance for Commercial Radio. The composer Tony Lee, who was also a record producer at CBS Sony, was so impressed by her performance that he offered her a contract with his label. But it wasn’t until 1985 that she released her first album in Cantonese which was named after herself. Her second album Self-Indulgence the following year was a hit and earned platinum certification.
Also read: 9 Hong Kong movies that spotlight the city’s social issues
3. Breaking into the Mandarin market
In 1990, she branched out to recording her first Mandarin album Home Again Without You. It was so popular that more than five million copies were sold in Asia. A decade later, this album was recognised as one of the top 100 Mandarin albums of all time; Lam was the only Hong Kong artist on the list.
4. A diverse range of musical genres
Lam occasionally translated Japanese songs into Cantonese in the early days of her career. But her repertoire has evolved since then: house, dance-pop, light jazz, blues, R&B, soul and electronic music. She was also one of the musicians to thrust ambient music into Hong Kong’s mainstream music scene.
5. Musicals and film songs
Beyond pop concerts, Lam also performed the lead role of a 1997 Mandarin musical Snow Wolf Lake, a romantic piece with Jacky Cheung as the artistic director. The show went on to play 42 sell-out performances at The Coliseum. In April 2002, when British theatrical producer Cameron Mackintosh staged Les Misérables in Shanghai, Lam was invited to sing On My Own in Mandarin.
She also did a number of covers of Hollywood movie songs, such as Take My Breath Away which was used in the movie Top Gun (1986), and original songs for movies such as Two Hearted Flowers for the 2011 Hong Kong movie Hi, Fidelity.
Zabrina is the Senior Editor, Arts and Culture of Tatler Hong Kong. She specialises in performing arts, visual art and film. Her wanderlust was first fuelled by the Mighty Rovers Antarctica Expedition 2010. Over the years, she has interviewed A-list artists and filmmakers, including Oscar winners Chlóe Zhao and Tim Yip, Golden Horse winner Sylvia Chang, In the Mood for Love cinematographer Christopher Doyle, Pachinko author Min Jin Lee, and Coachella’s first Chinese solo singer Jackson Wang. She won gold at the WAN-IFRA Asian Media Awards for her 2021 feature on the waves of hate crimes targeting Asian Americans.
