Journal • Sep 15, 2026 ｜ Past Issues 前期

In the 1990s, Sarah Chen was often cited as a model of a successfully transformed singer. The idea of “transformation” originated in the promotion of Woman’s Heart6:

这是李宗盛的新尝试，也是陈淑桦的新转变。

This is Jonathan Lee’s new experiment, and also Sarah Chen’s new transformation.

By 1991, journalists had incorporated the transformation framework into stories about Chen. In a 1991 article from Taiwan comparing Sarah Chen and Sandy Lam “陈淑桦 vs 林忆莲 — 歌坛两颗女人心争宠,” the author described Sarah Chen as follows:8

陈淑桦势必不能再以原有形象，继续「老生常谈」，她必须更成熟、更有个人独立观点；滚石企划人员为她的改变定了一个新的范畴，毅然推翻她既往的形象。

Sarah Chen could no longer retain her existing image, and continue to “rehash old clichés.” She had to become more mature and develop more personal, independent views. Rock Records’ planning team defined a new category for her transformation, and resolutely toppled her former image.

In contrast, the article quoted Sandy Lam’s producer, 陈秀男:

「林忆莲是个有理想、抱负的艺人，她希望将自己的音乐能散布的更为广泛，而不只限于台、港两地歌迷听」。

Sandy Lam is an artist with ideals and ambitions. She hopes that her own music can spread more widely, rather than be heard only by fans in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Lam and Chen occupied comparable positions in Mandopop at the time8, but the ways they were promoted couldn’t have been more different. Whereas Lam’s producer represented her as an artist pursuing her own ambitions, the description of Chen made Rock Records the agent of her development. And look at what was said about Chen:

“势必不能再以原有形象 could no longer retain her existing image” – implying that her old image was unacceptable.

“她必须更成熟、更有个人独立观点 she had to become more mature and develop more personal, independent views” – implying that she was naïve and lacked an independent point of view.

“滚石企划人员…毅然推翻她既往的形象 Rock Records’ planning team resolutely toppled her former image” – implying that her former image was so terrible it had to be toppled.

Rock Records positioned its record-breaking, million-selling star9 through a Spring and Autumn brushstroke10,11. It never said outright that Chen was deficient or lacked individuality. Instead, each sentence implied that her former image was so inadequate that it had to be – not merely changed but toppled.

If the 1991 report seems unrepresentative of Rock Records’ promotional strategy, Lee’s own later description made it even more explicit. In a 2003 documentary meant to draw Chen back, Lee described the transformation framework as follows.7

她以前唱《黑发变白发》《夕阳伴我归》这一类，是蛮重的东西。

She previously sang things like “Black Hair Turns White” and “Sunset Follows Me Home.” That’s pretty heavy stuff.

在我们给她塑造的这个东西里面，因为这些素材跟她以前唱的所谓比较老式主流靡靡之音不一样。

In this thing we shaped her into, the material was different from the so called old-style mainstream decadent music she had sung before.

我记得《女人心》卖了十四、十五万张。《那一夜你喝了酒》《那一年我二十五岁》这些东西下去，是我想一次帮淑桦“洗底”，把以前所有的旧的形象全部洗掉。所以那个药下得很猛。

I remember that Woman’s Heart sold 140K or 150K copies. With songs like That Night You Were Drunk, That Year I was Twenty-Five, I wanted, once and for all, to help Sarah scrub her record clean, washing away all her old images. Hence, the medicine administered was very strong.

In his own words, Lee first described Sarah Chen’s past work as “very heavy stuff” and “old-style mainstream decadent music” before turning to two phrases connoting criminality and disease:   “洗底” (scrubbing her record clean) and “药下得很猛” (administering a heavy dose of medicine).

Readers get the idea: Chen had a stained record requiring someone else to scrub it clean. Her previous work was analogous to a terrible disease that had to be treated with a very strong medicine. And what required cleansing and treatment? The “heavy stuff” and “decadent music.” What was the cure? Woman’s Heart: songs that men wrote in a feminine voice12, promoted through language that removed Chen’s artistic agency.6

Besides using strong language connoting crime and disease, Lee’s characterization of Chen’s former work as heavy and decadent is incorrect. Sunset Follows Me Home, one of the two songs he cited as “very heavy stuff,” is a cheerful Taiwan Campus Folk song about returning home at sunset.

As for “decadent,” Chen was among the most stylistically Western-oriented and cross-cultural Mandopop singers of her era. A 1985 Singapore article called her an “East-West singer.”13,14 English songs were her musical training ground, and she released three exquisit English albums with EMI15–17. Songs such as “The Right to Sing” and “Jealous Lover” were defiant and norm-breaking. Her later Mandopop songs, including Lee’s work, drew on those earlier English recordings. The song “Forgive Me,” with lyrics written by Lee and included on Woman’s Heart, closely paralleled Chen’s 1987 English song “If You Ever Had a Broken Heart.”

Because Chen started singing at age eight in the late 1960s, she went through an early childhood phase in which her Mandarin repertoire included lounge-style songs.15 But that was when she was young. By 1980, when Chen signed with Haishan Records, her repertoire no longer consisted of the old-style songs. Instead, it was rooted in Chinese poetry. Seven-Mile Fragrance was written by the poet Xi Mu-Rong, and Autumn Farewell was styled after Song Dynasty verse.

When she began her collaboration with Rock Records, Chen was signed to the international label EMI Singapore, which focused on developing her multilingual and cross-cultural singing style.18 The five albums on which she collaborated with Tan Jian-Chang were diverse in style – Mandopop, rock, folk, and Taiwan Campus Folk. Chen won the Golden Bell Award for Best Female Singer for that work3, even breaking EMI’s sales record with her album Wandering the World18,19. She was widely popular in Taiwan, Singapore20, and Malaysia21, her success built largely on a modern image and a fresh singing style that integrated the best of Western and Eastern music.

The albums Chen recorded before joining Rock Records are arguably her most artistically compelling works. Songs such as Ocean's Song, Wandering the World, Autumn Fills My Heart, and Black Hair Turns White remain popular on YouTube, despite no longer receiving official label support. Lee’s comments do not reflect the full extent of Chen’s work.

The “medicine” prescribed to Chen was no real treatment. The most depressing song I’ve heard in Chen’s repertoire was That Year I was Twenty-Five, one of the two songs Lee cited as the cure. It told the story of a Taiwanese woman moving to New York and losing hope after her lover was too poor to marry her. The song began with Chen quietly speaking over horror-movie music: “I woke up at midnight, a bit cold, a bit unfamiliar.” It made my hair stand up as I wondered what murderous scene was about to unfold. If the goal was to wash away Chen’s past as a singer of emotionally heavy songs, why include such dark material in Woman’s Heart?

Language is powerful, but sometimes its strongest effects come from what is implied rather than what is said22. If the promotional language had said, “Woman’s Heart belongs to Jonathan Lee,” or “Sarah Chen’s past work is terrible, almost disease-like,” few would have believed it. But when the message was implied, it worked like a charm.

By 1998, the year when Chen ended her career, a Taiwanese magazine article titled “Very Simple Sarah Chen” described her as follows:23

陈淑桦是创立九十年代都会女子代言形象的第一人。其实她早在八十年代即已出道，但到了九十年代跳槽至滚石唱片后，才在陈升、李宗盛等音乐人的打造下，脱离旧有的土气，以时尚的都会女子形象出现。精确的企划及动人的词曲演绎，令陈淑桦不但成功改造自己，同时也带动后人沿着相同的路继续前进，且多半都能获得不错成绩。

Sarah Chen was the first person to build an “urban woman” image in the 1990s. She had actually debuted in the 1980s, but it wasn’t until the 1990s, after she jumped ship to Rock Records and was fashioned by musicians such as Bobby Chen and Jonathan Lee, that she shed her former rustic image and appeared as a fashionable urban woman. Accurate label planning and moving interpretations of lyrics and song caused Sarah Chen not only to transform herself successfully, but also to lead later artists along the same path, most of whom achieved good results.

The promotional language had been fully absorbed into mainstream media. The transformation framework had not only changed the evaluation of Chen’s career; it had rewritten its chronology. Her prodigious early career, awards, regional stature, and EMI years disappeared so that the story began with Rock Records.

Chen ended her career that same year; she later cut off all ties with the music industry.

The linguistic devices – the causative construction and the transformation framework – contributed to a stunning case of narrative capture in Mandopop history. The transformation framework erased what came before Rock Records, while the causative construction reassigned what came after to Lee and the label.

Yet for over thirty years, the promotional language went unchallenged. Quite the opposite, the causative statements that deprived Chen of her agency were accepted, repeated, and amplified. It is easy to point fingers at whoever wrote and repeated those lines, but the ubiquitous acceptance of the message means that the responsibility falls on many of us.

Reports from the 1980s and 1990s indicated that Sarah Chen herself was grateful for her collaboration with Lee and Rock Records24. Woman’s Heart was one of her favorite albums.25 While still recovering from poor health in 1991, Chen recounted a time when she fainted at a company event26. She said that Lee was the one who took her to the hospital.

In the same documentary in which Lee characterized Chen’s earlier work through metaphors of criminality and disease, he also praised her singing, called her irreplaceable, and pleaded for her return.7 The affection for Chen only made the loss of her artistic agency more tragic.

One day, I hope, someone at Rock Records will feel the obligation and find the courage to correct the record that has written their beloved colleague’s artistic agency out of history.