Singer Karen Mok, who released a new vinyl album this week, talks about meeting ‘Uncle Leslie Cheung’, the vinyl revival and her musical dream

At the conceptual core of Karen Mok and the Masters lies The Book of Changes. It’s a fitting framework for a multihyphenate like Mok, whose career, spanning three decades across music, film and theatre, has been a series of experimental transformations. She reveals that her Chinese name, Man Wai (文蔚), originates from a line in the text: “君子豹變，其文蔚然，惠及萬民”, which is roughly translated as “the noble person transforms like the leopard, with patterns resplendent, bringing wisdom to all.”

That connection forms both the spiritual and intellectual anchor of the album. Mok treats the Book of Changes not as an esoteric reference but as a living text about change and balance. “I’ve always been fascinated by opposites,” she says. “The tactile craft of vinyl versus the infinite universe of virtual reality, the warmth of human instruments next to digital precision. Life is about those conversations.”

Musically, the record oscillates between Western rock textures and meditative Chinese motifs, blending live strings with electronic synthesisers, rap rhythms with Peking opera phrasing. Tracks like Moonlight (Beethoven Piano Battle) reinterpret Beethoven through an Eastern lens—a “pipa battle”, as Mok calls it, fusing classical piano with Cantonese theatrical cadence.

If philosophy grounds Karen Mok and the Masters, its medium grants it soul. Mok has long expressed frustration with the digital disposability of streaming culture, and she sees the current revival of vinyl not merely as nostalgia but as rebellion.

“Music used to be something you held,” she says, “something you cared for. You lifted the needle, wiped the dust. That gesture made you listen, not skip.” Each vinyl pressing of Karen Mok and the Masters comes with a substantial art book, thick and tactile, filled with artwork, handwritten lyrics and production notes. Mok holds up a copy of the vinyl and says with a beam, “Look how thick and heavy it is. It carries almost too many of our dreams.”

For Mok, creating a physical album in 2025 feels almost revolutionary. It is, she says, a symbolic act of slowing down, “I hope people will listen to it not once, but for a lifetime, and that one day someone might find it decades later and still think, ‘this is beautiful.’”

In conversation, Mok’s tone softens when she speaks of Canto-pop icon Leslie Cheung, her idol and the emotional patron saint of her artistry. She first met Cheung when she was about six or seven years old, presenting flowers to the winners of a singing contest. One of them was Cheung. “I saw him perform, and I was dazzled by the way he looked and everything about him. He was literally like Prince Charming,” she says.

Years later, while filming the 1996 erotic comedy Viva Erotica, which starred Mok and Cheung, she retold their encounter to him. “He didn’t remember the little girl, but he remembered my mother, who was in his fan club. From then on, he called me his ‘little niece’, and told me to call him Uncle Leslie,” she says. “He took great care of me and gave me advice in my acting and singing career.” Cheung’s belief in authenticity and artistic risk continues to shape Mok’s ethos.

More than 30 years into her music career, Mok shows no sign of retreating. Her forthcoming December concert in Kai Tak, titled The Big Big Show, promises to be a monumental affair: celebrating the 33rd anniversary of her debut, the show will be a live embodiment of her album and will feature classics from her repertoire, elements of Wing Chun and musicals.

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Yet the pop and rock singer’s gaze is already fixed beyond the concert hall. She reveals that her next goal is to produce a Hong Kong musical, one that unites her twin passions for cinema and music. “Film allows me to enter other people’s souls,” she says. “Theatre does that in real time. I want to create something that celebrates Hong Kong’s rhythm, its poetry, its grit and its humour.” She doesn’t have solid plans for it just yet, but is open to the idea of a rock musical, given her latest album’s creative direction.

She hopes to inspire the new generation of actors and musicians with her adventurous personality. “Today, there are a lot of opportunities presented to young people. But a lot of them are lost,” she says, adding that the growing popularity and reliance on AI dangerously diminishes human creativity. She believes that music or any other form of creativity should come from the heart—it shouldn’t be just a task to complete. “Today, technology grants us a lot of tools. But we have to remember that they are tools which can only assist you,” she says. “AI cannot generate true passion and creativity.

“So I urge you to find what sets you on fire. That spark cannot be given by anyone else and certainly not by AI. But once you find it, cherish it. Work hard for it. Don’t be afraid to get your hands dusty. It is only then that you’ll know what truly inspires you.”

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