蔡健雅的根源 [going back to her roots]

like stefanie sun and kit chan, tanya chua actually is english-educated and english-speaking (but as you know, lee kuan yew made the english-educated speak mandarin as well), and she is most comfortable singing english. but english market is not easy, so she has only released only 3 english albums so far, compared to the tonnes of chinese albums she did.

i bought both the new releases, an english one and a mandarin one, from taiwan and i can frankly tell you that i have banished the chinese one to some faraway hidden corner of my house, and just keeping the english one, which is the one we are recommending here.

what is great about this is, in composing and singing english songs, tanya can stick to what she loves most, that's indie pop and not conform/comply with the boring and suffocating ba-lak (ballad) formula demanded by chinese pop. so in a way, she is "liberated" when she sings and writes in english. 

to be frank, though immensely talented, tanya is not exactly original in her craft. she listens to too many western indie acts that influence her compositions greatly but what the heck, we still like what she writes. because no one writes like her (except liyana fizi), especially in chinese pop today.

tanya made a name in the chinese scene, and not the english scene for reasons obvious to many. she is totally unique in the chinese scene, but in the english scene, she has too many competitors la.

this album is good, we like it. comparable to liyana fizi's "between the lines" and much better than zee avi's "ghostbird". what tanya really lacks is a strong direction and of course, an international english label like zee avi's brushfire records.

among today's crop of chinese singer-songwriters, tanya chua ranks in our top-3 best after cheer chen and wu jia hui.

get this, you won't be disappointed.