How Chungking Express brought dream pop to Hong… | Little White Lies

Film Music

How Chungk­ing Express brought dream pop to Hong Kong

13 Feb 2021

Words by James Balmont

Woman looking pensive in low light, with violet and blue tones.
Woman looking pensive in low light, with violet and blue tones.
Cocteau Twins’ Simon Ray­monde and The Cran­ber­ries’ Noël Hogan reflect on the musi­cal lega­cy of Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 film.

Wong Kar-wai’s 1994 film Chungk­ing Express is in many ways his most evoca­tive mas­ter­piece. A two-part tale of pos­si­ble romances set in the thriv­ing back alleys of Chungk­ing Man­sions, it paints love and lust as an insa­tiable med­ley, with fre­net­ic cam­er­a­work, neon lights and dynam­ic edit­ing form­ing an intox­i­cat­ing mix at the heart of a mul­ti­cul­tur­al melt­ing pot.

It was an inter­na­tion­al break­through for Wong, screen­ing at fes­ti­vals and the­atres in Europe, Aus­tralia, Asia and South Amer­i­ca before arriv­ing in the US via Quentin Taran­ti­no and his Rolling Thun­der Pic­tures label. But this scin­til­lat­ing vision of con­tem­po­rary Hong Kong, lapped up by art­house fanat­ics across the globe, was not mere­ly a one-way crossover phenomenon.

A new sev­en-disc Wong Kar-wai box set released by Cri­te­ri­on describes Chungk­ing Express as a juke­box movie’, a film whose very iden­ti­ty is quan­ti­fied by the vibran­cy of its multi­na­tion­al sound­track. Cocteau Twins’ Simon Ray­monde calls it a cross-pol­li­na­tion of cul­tures and music”; in the words of The Cran­ber­ries’ Noël Hogan, it’s the kind of movie that makes you go, What’s that song? Who’s this band?” But Chungk­ing Express isn’t just a great sound­track movie – it was the gen­e­sis of numer­ous inroads for the pop artists around it, too.

Reg­gae singer Den­nis Brown clash­es with Dinah Washington’s smoky jazz hit What A Diff’rence a Day Makes’, while the Mamas and the Papas’ sun­shine pop clas­sic Cal­i­for­nia Dreamin’ plays out end­less­ly in a fast food joint that seems to have plucked its menu from Phileas Fogg’s back pock­et. It’s here that Faye Wong’s hip host­ess becomes the film’s most cap­ti­vat­ing fix­a­tion, for audi­ences and lead­ing man Tony Leung alike.

The jan­gling gui­tars of Dreams’ by Irish alt-rock band The Cran­ber­ries play out sev­er­al times across the film’s sec­ond nar­ra­tive (as well as over the end cred­its). A hazy, wist­ful bal­lad about roman­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty and change, it seems to ful­ly embody the spir­it and char­ac­ter of the film. If it weren’t for the vocals, you’d be for­giv­en for think­ing it was the orig­i­nal: Faye Wong’s ren­di­tion is, in fact, the only song on the sound­track sung in Can­tonese. As such, it is the track most con­ducive to the film’s vivid set­ting in pre-1997 Hong Kong: a West­ern import giv­en a Chi­nese-lan­guage makeover.

A woman with eyes closed, wearing a striped top, standing in front of a green wall.

If Faye Wong was already some­thing of a pop star pri­or to 1994, Chungk­ing Express launched her to new heights. But it wasn’t until the album Ran­dom Thoughts’ – released just a few months before the film – that she tru­ly estab­lished her iden­ti­ty. And it was her shim­mer­ing cov­er of Dreams’ that cement­ed her move into alter­na­tive rock, ele­vat­ing her above the tra­di­tion­al Can­to-pop bal­lads play­ing on the radio. The song was such a sen­sa­tion that she end­ed up re-record­ing it – this time in Man­darin – for fol­low-up record Sky’.

At the end of the decade Faye Wong was named in the Guin­ness Book of World Records as the best-sell­ing female Can­tonese pop artist of all time. She became the first Chi­nese singer to appear on the cov­er of Time mag­a­zine, and, in 2009, com­mand­ed the high­est appear­ance fee for any singer on the Chi­na main­land at $1 mil­lion per show.

Yet Faye Wong wasn’t the only par­ty to ben­e­fit from the suc­cess of Chungk­ing Express. By 1996, The Cran­ber­ries had become house­hold names in Hong Kong. The suc­cess of Dreams’ thrust the Irish band into the cul­tur­al main­stream in a man­ner that was high­ly unusu­al at the time for a West­ern artist.

I don’t ever remem­ber hear­ing of any­one else get­ting their song cov­ered and released in the way that Dreams’ was down there,” says lead gui­tarist Hogan. The sto­ry we’d been told was that Faye’s ver­sion of Dreams’ became the favourite song of the Chi­nese Prime Minister’s wife. When she’d go places, they’d play the song – and it made it a hit.” Hogan laughs as he recalls the rumours the band heard about the track’s suc­cess – anoth­er being that the Chi­nese Olympic team had used it as their team song for a peri­od. It could have been fic­tion for all I know, but you’d hope that some­where in there is a bit of truth.”

The ques­tion became moot when The Cran­ber­ries arrived in Hong Kong for the first time in 1996. Head­lin­ing the 12,500 capac­i­ty Hong Kong Col­i­se­um was a state­ment in itself, but the band were still wary. If you go to a place for the first time and the gigs are emp­ty, then you know you’ve been told lies,” says Hogan. You won­der if one song is real­ly going to fill a stadium.

Of course, it can do,” he quick­ly adds, recall­ing the vast crowd that sang along to Dreams’ when the band reached that point in the setlist. The place went crazy. We knew it had been a hit, but it was a lev­el up when we played Dreams’.”

A man with a serious expression resting his head on his hand, with a woman with curly hair sitting next to him at a table with drinks.

The Cran­ber­ries weren’t the only band to strike it big in Hong Kong via Chungk­ing Express. Anoth­er Faye Wong cov­er, Blue­beard’, by Scot­tish dream pop pio­neers Cocteau Twins, also fea­tured on the film’s sound­track – and, as the open­ing track on Ran­dom Thoughts’, it became a mis­sion state­ment for Wong’s cre­ative direc­tion as her career took off in the mid-’90s.

From that moment on, Wong solid­i­fied her asso­ci­a­tion with Cocteau Twins. Hav­ing already cov­ered two of their songs on Ran­dom Thoughts’ (fifth track Know One­self and Each Oth­er’ is a rework­ing of Know Who You Are at Every Age’), she found her­self col­lab­o­rat­ing with the band for a string of sub­se­quent releas­es, each act work­ing in their native stu­dios, sep­a­rat­ed by approx­i­mate­ly 6,000 miles and an impen­e­tra­ble lan­guage barrier.

I was a mas­sive film buff – we all were,” says bass gui­tarist and key­board play­er Ray­monde. Wong Kar-wai was some­body who was being talked about a lot, and we’d all seen Chungk­ing Express and thought it was bril­liant. When the pos­si­bil­i­ty [of col­lab­o­rat­ing with Faye Wong] was men­tioned, there was a recog­ni­tion there because of the film and how good it was. It was the film that sparked our inter­est in doing it.”

Cocteau Twins’ con­tri­bu­tions Frac­ture’ and Spoil­sport’ appeared on Faye Wong’s 1996 album Fuzao’, which was heav­i­ly influ­enced by the band’s aes­thet­ic and sound, while Amuse­ment Park’ appeared along­side a cov­er of Rilkean Heart’ on her 1997 fol­low-up Faye Wong’.

The asso­ci­a­tion brought a new audi­ence to the Cocteau Twins, just as the band had hoped. While their plans to tour Hong Kong in the late 90s were scup­pered when vocal­ist Liz Fras­er quit the band, their 1996 album Milk & Kiss­es’ was released in East­ern Asia; it includ­ed an exclu­sive duet ver­sion of Ser­pentskirt’ fea­tur­ing Wong. That was a real first,” Ray­monde recalls. Let­ting some­one else’s vocals be on our record­ings. We thought it was fun. It was different.”

Two young people in yellow shirts sitting on a bench and looking at each other, with a blurred green background.

As con­tem­po­rary Can­to-pop stars like Can­dy Lo began to emu­late the same jan­g­ly, dream pop sound on records like the 1998 EP Don’t Have to be… Too Per­fect’ and sub­se­quent album Miao’, and with Cocteau Twins hav­ing gone their sep­a­rate ways, Faye Wong moved away from the musi­cal style that had defined her ascen­den­cy amid what Ray­monde believes were cre­ative ten­sions between her and her record label.

Wong ini­tial­ly retired from the pop scene in 2005, hav­ing sold close to 10 mil­lion records by the turn of the cen­tu­ry, earn­ing her com­par­isons to Madon­na from media out­lets who had dubbed her the Diva” of Hong Kong. She reunit­ed with Wong Kar-wai in 2004, appear­ing as a bouf­fant-haired android/​hotel landlord’s daugh­ter in the Palme d’Or-nominated 2046, and lat­er revived her singing career with a series of tri­umphant come­back shows between 2010 and 2012. Her ver­sions of Dreams’ and Rilkean Heart’ were reg­u­lar­ly includ­ed on the setlists.

The Cran­ber­ries, mean­while, returned to Hong Kong and main­land Chi­na sev­er­al times before the death of singer Dolores O’Riordan in 2018 spelled the end for the band. I do think that a lot of our pop­u­lar­i­ty in Chi­na is because of Dreams’,” con­cludes Hogan. It takes just one movie like that. It opens the door.”

Ray­monde agrees: It can have the effect of spawn­ing inter­est in a whole move­ment of music. And that style of music in the West – with female vocals and effects and reverb – it did cross over. Because if it didn’t then bands like The Cran­ber­ries and the Cocteau Twins wouldn’t have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to trav­el around the world in the way that we did.”

With pub­li­ca­tions like the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post and Time Out Hong Kong still cham­pi­oning dream pop artists in Hong Kong as recent­ly as July 2020, the influ­ence of these vision­ar­ies evi­dent­ly remains strong. With artists such as Taipei shoegaz­ers U.TA quick to acknowl­edge Faye Wong’s influ­ence, it’s safe to say that if music is a uni­ver­sal lan­guage, Chungk­ing Express requires no interpretation.

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