Latest Release
- OCT 27, 2023
- 8 Songs
- 認了吧 (台灣版) · 2007
- What's Going On...? · 2006
- ? · 2011
- 你的陳奕迅國語精選 · 2003
- Live for Today · 2003
- Eason Chan (Cantonese Collection) · 2000
- C'mon in~ · 2017
- 孤勇者 (《英雄聯盟:雙城之戰》動畫劇集中文主題曲) - Single · 2021
- Getting Ready · 2015
- 認了吧 (台灣版) · 2007
Essential Albums
- By the time Eason Chan released rice & shine, the Hong Kong-born singer had been one of Asian pop’s biggest stars for almost 20 years—and he’d had success singing in Mandarin and Cantonese, receiving a slew of awards and accolades while selling out tours and releasing albums at a steady clip. On rice & shine, Chan plays around with his multifaceted stardom a bit, putting aside the irony that had marked his early work and lending his buttery voice to gentle, laidback pop songs. "I wanted to do an album that was very qingxin (fresh), zizai (free), and xiaosa (unfettered)," Chan told press around the time of rice & shine’s release. Chan decided to conjure those vibes by splitting the Mandarin-language album’s behind-the-boards duties between Chinese songwriting and production duo Radio Mars (which handles rice) and Singaporean composer JJ Lin (who wrote the music on shine). The duality of rice & shine allows Chan to present himself more fully as an artist. Radio Mars’ songs on rice allow Eason, who turned 40 the year rice & shine came out, to show off his more mature side; opening track “娛樂天空 (High Light High Life)” is sparkling sophistipop with a catchy chorus, while “不如承諾來的蕳單 (You)” is a tender ballad that gathers steam as it goes, with strings adding intensity to a fervent vocal performance. shine’s leadoff track, “放棄治療 (Forgot My Meds),” has a piano-bar jauntiness, allowing Chan to flaunt his showman style, while other Lin-composed cuts like the sweeping “陰天快樂 (Cloudy Day)” and the emotion-racked “你給我聽好 (Listen Up)” are ballads that split the difference between rock and Broadway, their string-heavy arrangements framing the singer’s passion in fierce beauty. The playful concept and impressive execution of rice & shine show how Chan, decades into his career, succeeds when he flips his script.
- Eason Chan’s 28th album (and 17th in Cantonese) is a brief yet intense listen that packs the full spectrum of emotion into soaring, larger-than-life tracks that show off the Hong Kong native’s still-robust vocals. Chan said in interviews around The Key’s 2013 release that its first track, “主旋律 (The Main Theme),” presented him with one of his greatest vocal challenges; composed by C.Y. Kong and Lesley Chiang, it’s a goth-rock opera in miniature, with Chan’s voice dipping into the lowest reaches and vaulting to the very top of his register as he sings about the parallels between love and music, strings cresting and pianos crashing around him as he thinks about a ships-passing interaction with someone for whom “the time isn’t right.” “主旋律 (The Main Theme)” is a wild opening salvo, but the next two tracks match its heady heights, with Chan commanding a sonic maelstrom on “告別娑婆 (Goodbye Saha)” and digging into darkly hued midtempo rock on the swaying “斯德哥爾摩情人 (Stockholm Lover).” Although the music gets more delicate on tracks like the fluttering “失憶蝴蝶 (The Butterfly Effect)” and the serene “床頭床尾 (Head End, Foot End, Bed Ends),” Chan’s fervency remains, his voice sounding draped in velvet as he mulls over the way love can be fleeting on the former track and retells the ups and downs of a long-lasting couple’s relationship on the latter. “阿貓阿狗 (Cat and Dog),” which closes the album, swings between hushed verses and a raging chorus, with the singer breaking down the fallacies that influence others’ perceptions of success. The Key seethes with intensity musically and lyrically as Chan leans into full-throttle emotionalism and lets his listeners eavesdrop on his tumultuous inner monologue while he ponders life’s big questions.
- After signing with Hong Kong’s Emperor Entertainment Group in the early 2000s, Eason Chan emerged as one of Southeast Asia’s biggest pop stars, and his second album for the label, the Cantonese Shall We Dance? Shall We Talk!, possesses the sort of confidence that results in big swings. Opening with an orchestral flourish that recalls grand movie themes, “Shall We Dance” finds Chan in full-on crooner mode, his assured baritone soaring above runaway-train congas, bright bleats of brass, and swooping strings. He revisits the mid-20th-century jazz club on “Eason’s Angel,” a brief interlude that features him whistling, and the rest of Shall We Dance? Shall We Talk! is a gleeful time warp, darting through the decades as Chan shows off his vocal versatility. The other semi-title track, “Shall We Talk,” is as ornately orchestrated as its companion track, but it slows down the pace a little bit, allowing its lyrics to fully sink in. Its central message—about communicating feelings to people, no matter how excruciating the concept might be—resulted in it being used in a mental-health awareness campaign by the Hong Kong government two decades after its release, cementing it as one of the most important songs in Chan’s storied career. As with Chan’s other records, frivolity is on the menu as well. “太空漫遊 (A Space Odyssey)” flips Richard Strauss’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra”—used as the theme to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey—into a disco groove, with the cosmos’ far-flung frontiers serving as a metaphor for seeking out new experiences. “怪物 (Monster)” is a fast-paced funk track, its wah-wah guitars and dry brass acting as a foil for the singer’s gasped vocal; when combined with the ballads that make up the rest of the album, what emerges is a full picture of Chan, who was just beginning to come into his own as a vocalist and personality, and his massive potential.
- 2014
Music Videos
- 2023
- 2023
Artist Playlists
- Meet Eason Chan, the man who's redefining Cantopop.
- Cantopop music videos with love at the forefront.
- The irreverent artist’s catalogue is stocked with KTV standards.
- 2023
Live Albums
Compilations
- 2014
About Eason Chan
Named as part of the third generation of “Gods of Songs” preceded by icons Sam Hui and Jacky Cheung, Eason Chan ushered in a new era of Cantopop in the mid-‘90s. After winning a Hong Kong TVB singing competition in 1995, Chan went on to also find fame in the Mandopop scene, and boasts a vast catalogue of songs released in both languages. Chan’s jaw-dropping list of accolades and huge following can be attributed to his raw authenticity; he stripped away the shiny packaging of mainstream pop to create a soothing, evocative sound, his husky vocals fusing an earnest connection with his audience.
- HOMETOWN
- Hong Kong
- BORN
- July 27, 1974
- GENRE
- Cantopop/HK-Pop