Canto pop gets back on track

Seems like there hasn’t been a Thailand concert by a Hong Kong star since the Korean wave rolled into the Kingdom and washed other Asian acts away.

Canto-pop artist Eason Chan recently jetted into Bangkok to set that omission to rights and affirmed the popularity of the genre at his sold-out “Life” concert at CentralWorld Live.

Tickets for the show sold out so fast that promoter AMC Live Group quickly added another concert to meet demand. Both were sell outs as Chinese fans, most of them living here, poured into the auditorium along with Chan’s disciples from Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and Singapore.

 “I’ve been looking forward to this country for ages,” said one Hong Kong fan who came with a group of her friends. “He is a great superstar.”

Time magazine recently called the singer and songwriter “the forerunner of the next generation of Canto-pop, after Sam Hui and Jacky Cheung while Time Out Hong Kong has dubbed him the  “King of Asian Pop”. 

Others have described him as a breath of fresh air on the HK music scene.

The audience screamed loudly and waved their green light sticks in greeting as Chan came out on stage and greeted them in Thai with “Sawasdi khrub, welcome to my life, sabai dee mai”.

The concert was divided into four themes: “Life”, “Illusion”, “Feeling” and “Enjoy”. In his first set, Chan performed “One Thing A Day”, “Flower World”, “That’s Just Life”, “Perfect Life”, “Train”, and “Ages”, all numbers that have a bearing on how we lead our lives.

After a short break to change into the conceptual costume that adorned the concert poster, Chan ratcheted up the tempo with colourful laser beams and a set of fast-paced songs that included “Welcome to the Future”, “Door”, “Wheel”, “Adult”, “PK” and “Hyperkinetic Disorder”.

Nattily attired in a jumpsuit covered in dots, he crooned the ballads “Stranger under My Skin” and “Photograph” before leaving the stage again to change into a blue costume for the “Feeling” segment of the show, which included mega hits “Afraid of Death”, “Maniac Dairy”, “Today” and “My Happy Times”.

“Every song is related to my own life and experiences. The next song is ‘Popular Song’, which I wrote 10 years ago,” said Chan, as he picked up his acoustic guitar.

The Canto pop artist closed out the concert with “Life” before rocking the audience with an encore featuring “King of Karaoke”, “Ten Years” and “Trap”.