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Andy Lau Tak-wah. Faye Wong. Anita Mui Yim-fong. Leon Lai Ming. Even without knowing a single chorus, anyone who calls Hong Kong home is likely familiar with such performing greats of the 1980s and 90s. Cantopop is as deeply embedded in Hong Kong’s identity as its dim sum, cha chaan teng and mahjong. For such a small city, Hong Kong’s music is still able to traverse borders, making waves big enough to wash up on shores far away from home, in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and beyond.
Maybe diversity is just in Cantopop’s DNA, a trait of our melting-pot city, where songs are sung in multiple languages and influences range from J-pop to R&B. Ask local artist Kiri T, and she’ll tell you, “Cantopop is a bit of everything, kind of like how Hong Kong people are. Even the way we speak, we don’t speak in Cantonese completely.”
Born Kiri Tse Hiu-ying, the 30-year-old is just getting started as a singer, but she’s been working as a songwriter and producer since 2008. Wearing a baseball cap tugged low over her face, her hands balled into the sleeves of an oversized crew-neck jumper, she tells me the first demo she sold was a track titled “兩面” (“Two Sides”) sung by Joey Yung Cho-yee, one of Hong Kong’s most sought-after singers of the 2000s and 2010s. Tse was 14 years old at the time. “It’s so long ago. It’s crazy,” she says. “That song was the first time I heard a demo coming to life, and I just wanted it to happen many more times.”
“Cantopop is a bit of everything, kind of like how Hong Kong people are,” says Kiri T. Photo: Courtesy of Kiri T
Since then, she’s written songs and produced for the likes of Kary Ng Yu-fei, Kay Tse On-kay and Jace Chan Hoi-wing. Kiri Tse started her own record label, Kurious Grocery, in 2017 – shutting it down when she signed on to Warner Music in 2022 – released her debut album, Golden Kiri, in 2019, and her most recent, Chili T, was released in 2021. Right now she’s looking forward to the release of her new single, which drops on February 20.
