Better than ever - Jacky

I just attended a concert of my favourite male singer, Jacky Cheung.


How did I hear of him? During my first year of university, one of my classmates brought me to this music shop near our university. He recommended that I buy one album each of the four Heavenly Kings - Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, Leon Lai and Aaron Kwok. From the moment I heard Jacky Cheung sing, he was the only one for me.


Apart from Faye Wong, Jacky is the only other singer whom I place on a pedestal higher than all others.


Before university, my life was a very regimented one - badminton training sessions thrice a week with additional physical training sessions on Saturdays. I spent the rest of the time studying. I knew only badminton and books.


When I heard Jacky and Faye, they flung open the world of music to me. Only through their voices did I realise that there was this wonderful world of great Chinese/Cantonese music. This is why I've been their loyal fan for so many years. They were the ones who first liberated my ears. In my heart, they are irreplaceable.


Back to yesterday's concert: It has been a few years since Jacky Cheung came to Singapore. I also have not heard him sing live for quite a while. He did not let me down. The concert was polished and his voice was as good as before.


I also felt that he has matured a lot in terms of stage performance. This concert was the one that made me feel that he has finally broken off the shackles of performing the way his audience wanted him to perform. Instead, this concert was staged, I feel, according to what he wanted. He showed some nifty dance steps and also incorporated a segment where he performed songs from the musical Snow.Wolf.Lake and the movie Perhaps Love.


His concert contained some parts which were very touching to me. He sang songs that he composed for his older daughter and for his wife.


Then at another part, he turned a bit philosophical. He told the audience that inevitably, in life, there are some periods of deep sorrow but when one survives that, the future is definitely brighter. And he encouraged the audience to persevere when they are in a period of their lives when they are undergoing some difficulty or experiencing sorrow.


He referred to the year 2003 as a year when he felt very down and out. He didn't elaborate but that was the year when Leslie Cheung committed suicide in April and Anita Mui died of cervical cancer in December. These two singers were from his generation of Cantopop singers, and that generation was a very tight-knit bunch. I think he was very close to Anita as well as Leslie, especially Anita. They would always appear at each other's concerts. He sang a song he wrote in remembrance of them.


During a segment when he was singing songs of other artistes, he said doing so always made him nervous because if he failed badly, he would feel very embarrassed when he were to meet them the next time. But he said he believed that music should always be sung from the heart, and that people would feel it if he sang from his heart.

I felt it.