Journal • Oct 15, 2026 ｜ Past Issues 前期

Before providing a close reading of the songs, we first note three differences between the albums: originality, gender specificity, and conceptual breadth.

On originality, Miracle of Love is a cover album – all 12 tracks were originally performed by Western singers. Chen was making covers of popular English pop songs for the regional market, helping bridge the cultural gap between East and West3,4. Woman’s Heart, on the other hand, is an original album – the eight Chinese tracks were written specifically for Chen5–8. However, original composition is not the same as original concept. Because Woman’s Heart may have drawn some of its conceptual ideas from Miracle of Love, it is better regarded as a Mandopop adaptation of Western music than a bona fide innovation.

The albums also differ in gender specificity. Although performed by Chen, Miracle of Love is not intrinsically a woman’s album. The tracks are largely gender-neutral and could be performed by anyone; in fact, the majority were originally performed by male singers, such as Elvis and Billy Ocean. Chen’s innovation was to bring a feminine perspective to these songs. In contrast, Woman’s Heart was marketed as a collection of women’s love stories9,10, against the backdrop of rising female empowerment in 1980s Taiwan11. Although written by a man, Lee’s songs were strongly gendered – only women could sing some of them.

A third difference follows from this: Miracle of Love is conceptually broader than Woman’s Heart. It included tracks such as Give Me Peace on Earth, expressing a universal desire for world peace, and Somewhere Out There, originally sung by brother and sister mice in the animated film An American Tail. Woman’s Heart, in contrast, consists exclusively of ballads about women’s love experiences.

The gendered nature of Woman’s Heart raises the following question: If some narrative concepts were adapted, what happened to the woman inside those stories? In the next section, we provide close readings of the four songs with the strongest counterparts in Miracle of Love: 请原谅我, 25岁那年, 所以让我爱你, and 那一夜你喝了酒. The comparison suggests a recurrent pattern: despite being celebrated as an album for urban women, the Chinese songs often diminish the woman’s agency. 

3.1 If You Ever Had a Broken Heart and 请原谅我（Similarity score: 8）

Both songs concern a woman who has been hurt before and cannot accept a good new man because she is not emotionally free. In both, the old relationship remains psychologically present, preventing her from beginning a new one. The difference is subtle but meaningful. In If You Ever Had a Broken Heart, the woman states her condition and asks for time. In 请原谅我, she repeatedly apologizes for being unable to love him. Her refusal becomes a source of guilt, making the song somewhat reductive.

3.2 Little Girl and 25岁那年 (Similarity score: 8）

Both songs follow a young woman away from home in a foreign city, combining romantic disappointment, financial difficulty, and painful maturation. 25岁那年 is more concrete: Chinatown in New York, marriage expectations, and the memorable $7.25 they were left with. But the added detail narrows the woman’s future. In Little Girl, the young woman has been hurt by men, but her movement through the world is not organized around marrying one of them. In 25岁那年, migration, hope, and disappointment become closely tied to whether she will marry a particular man. The story is richer in detail, but female adulthood becomes more marriage-centered, a clear reduction in agency.

3.3 Some Hearts Are Diamonds and 所以让我爱你 (Similarity score: 7）

Both songs address a lonely, emotionally guarded person who appears to want love while resisting it. The narrator recognizes the resistance and offers love. The English song seeks reciprocity: both people need love. 所以让我爱你 moves in a different direction: the woman is prepared to accept uncertainty, a lack of return, and even an intermittent relationship. Reciprocal love becomes love with almost no demands placed on the man. This is the clearest reduction in the woman’s bargaining position among the four pairs.

3.4 Miracle of Love and 那一夜你喝了酒 (Similarity score: 6）

Both songs are about an emotionally wounded person who hides pain and then reveals vulnerability. The narrator presents love or tenderness as a response to suffering. In Miracle of Love, the wounded person is encouraged to open up and begin again; recovery requires action by that person. 那一夜你喝了酒 shifts the dramatic focus: a troubled man arrives drunk, reveals his pain, and the woman must judge when to give care and when to withdraw. The woman becomes the manager of the man’s emotional needs; her sensitivity is defined largely through caretaking, making this another reductive song.

Across all four pairs there is a strikingly consistent pattern. The Chinese songs are more concrete and narratively elaborate, but they narrow the woman’s position within the relationship: autonomous refusal becomes apologetic refusal; independent growth becomes a marriage-centered future; reciprocal love becomes love without reciprocity; healing becomes a woman caring for a troubled man. Despite its promotion, Woman’s Heart did not empower women in these songs. Instead, it reduced their agency — making Woman’s Heart more reductive than empowering. In other words, more 东施效颦 than 青出于蓝.

But even the phrase 东施效颦 is a misnomer. At least 东施 is a woman imitating another woman. Woman’s Heart raised the difficulty of the imitation, because Lee also took on the ancient practice of “men writing in a woman’s voice.” 12 The resulting reduction in women’s agency is perhaps unsurprising.

Paradoxically, women’s agency was better captured in the Lee-written song least similar to Miracle of Love: 我只为你美丽 (Beautiful Only For You, Similarity Score: 1/10), a song about finding one’s own identity while loving someone else. This is one of the most beautiful and sophisticated ballads from the Chen-Lee collaboration. Notably, it is not a gendered songs: men could express the same sentiments just as well as women. Chen’s feminine rendering sounded empowering in the song precisely because the sentiments were universal. 

In an interview about Chen’s 1989 million-selling album Talk to You, Listen to You, which Lee produced, Lee summarized his perspectives on songwriting and working with women singers as follows13:

“我是在透过音乐，跟那个时代的女性沟通。我是透过陈淑桦、透过林忆莲、透过莫文蔚，来跟当下那个时代的女性沟通，跟她们讨论，或者去猜想、阅读和描述那个时代的女性对于自身情感与生活的感受。

我这样讲好了，我必须认真地回想：我所描述的、我让大家在音乐中感受到的陈淑桦，以及她们三个人所呈现出来的面貌——我必须承认，和我实际认识的她们本人有相当的差异。不能说是“差距”，而是说，她们并不完全等同于歌曲里呈现出来的样子。

讲得最简单一点：她们是李宗盛的演员。”

“I tried to communicate with women from that era through music. Through Sarah Chen, Sandy Lam, and Karen Mok, I tried to talk to women from that era. I discussed with them, or tried to guess, read, and describe women’s emotions and life experiences of that era.

Let me put it this way, after thinking about it carefully: the Sarah Chen I described, the Chen people experienced through the music, the way the singers came across – I must admit, were quite different from who they really were. Well, they were not the same the women presented in the songs.

In simpler words: they are Jonathan Lee’s actors.”

Lee’s final statement captures the problem with the “men writing in a woman’s voice” tradition: the women singers were not considered equal partners. Had they been recognized as equal partners, not merely his actors, perhaps the songs would have reflected women’s own experiences. By treating them as his actors, Lee arrived at exactly what a male-dominated perspective could produce: Man’s Heart, branded as Woman’s Heart.

Sarah Chen was not, in fact, the caregiving, marriage-dependent woman portrayed in Woman’s Heart. Described by Kay Huang as “stubborn”14 and by Bobby Chen as “proud,”15 Chen was unyielding in maintaining  high professional standards16. Her disagreement with Lee over the musical direction of Woman’s Heart led to a difficult production that she jokingly described as the outcome of “fights.”8

Although she never appeared particularly proud to be Taiwan’s “voice of urban women,” Chen nonetheless identified with that persona. In a 1990 interview with Liu Jie17,18, she explained the reality that independent women faced in Taiwanese society:

「其实以我个人来说，我比较喜欢“都会女子”，做一个独立自主的女人。可是要做一个独立自主的女人，必须要有一个能够包容她的男人出现。因为我没有找到，所以我知道这样是危险的。对于我们现在的社会的女性、适婚年龄的女性来说，我觉得有点危险。我自己是 OK 啦，因为我觉得我有自己的想法——因为我还没去实现，所以我现在不能说——我觉得可能对我们现在的女性朋友会有一点点危险，因为她找不到那个 Mr. Right，因为她现在没有这样能够包容她的男生。我不能这样〔说〕——不能说都没有，比较少。如果有，可能都被选走了。」

“As for me, I like the idea of an “urban woman,” a woman with independence and autonomy. But such a woman needs a man who can accept her independence. I haven’t found such a man, so I know that it’s risky to be an independent woman. In our society, for women seeking marriage, I think it’s risky. I personally am OK with not finding a man, because I think I have my own views – though I cannot say what they are since I have not realized them. I think this ideal may be risky for women today, because they may not be able to find that Mr. Right, a man who can accept their independence. I can’t say that such men don’t exist, only that there are relatively few. Even if they exist, they’ve likely already been taken.”

Woman’s Heart lived in that society. So did Sarah Chen, and Jonathan Lee.