It was Paul Ewing, below, then heading up EMI Music in the region, who swam against the tide by signing up George Lam and released his first album- an all English album.
It was a brave move, because Lam, as he is more popularly known, was not about image like most of the other Hong Kong recording artists, and also had the type of vocal style that wasn’t like the other pop singers around.
At that time, I had just started out as a copywriter in advertising and was doing some writing for Billboard, the leading American music trade publication.
I was the first person to review his debut record and wrote something to the effect that in Lam, here was someone who was refreshingly different to other local artists and loved his version of Paul McCartney’s “Let ‘em In”.
It was a small, but very cliquey Hong Kong music scene and some “strenuously” disagreed with me about Lam ever being able to make it and rubbished the album and his vocal style.
Why? Because it wasn’t the usual MOR induced basso voice that I always felt leaned towards the stylings of people like Matt Munro, John Rowles, and Engelbert Humperdinck.
Lam sang in a much higher register that sounded “strained” to some, and which, maybe, wasn’t “manly”enough for local tastes.
Not that Lam cared.
With his moustache and laid back personality, he had recently arrived in Hong Kong after being a tennis coach in the States.
Perhaps because he was also a Libran, I liked him as a person and thought he was a welcome addition to a Hong Kong music scene that remains pretty unoriginal and continues to be run by amateurs and/or, well, crooks.
Of course, this fledgling scene changed forever when, what I had named Canto Pop, took Sam Hui’s career in a different direction- movies.
The financial landscape of the entertainment industry in Hong Kong changed forever with the introduction of lavish concerts, where style trumped substance and mediocrity was promoted by television stations, corrupt television executives and hairstylists became stars.
Along with the others who were recording, Lam started to release the far more lucrative Canto Pop world, began appearing in movies and has done very well for himself.
Married to singer Sally Yeh and now a father of a son who’s a singer, these are tough times for the music industry and where not much of anything is working.
The same can be said about everything else in a global economy that’s in the doldrums and where new business models are the only lifelines to rebooting the business world.
The question is this: Where’s the talent to help make this happen- and is there even a consumer market?
Everyone seems so hellbent in doing everything that nothing is happening because, just maybe, no one is buying what is being sold?
For those new to the business world and trying to make ends meet, not even AI and Elon Musk are going to help see business flourishing like it was 1999.
Getting back to Lam, he’s an iconic figure in the Hong Kong music world, he’s done very well for himself and can afford to do what the hell he wants.
An album of Remixes of his greatest hits?
Sure, why not, though I have no idea who, these days, are willing to pay for anything.
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