Paying homage is a tricky business. There’s always the danger of entering imitation territory and one’s work becoming derivative or less original as a result.

Asian Australian musician Rainbow Chan (雋然), usually found recording club music and experimental electronic tracks, skillfully traverses this fine line between imitation and art with her latest album Stanley (released in November 2021), producing a breathtakingly transcendental record wrapping English lyrics around strains that pay fond homage to the golden era of Mandopop and Cantopop that existed in the 1980s and 90s.

It is more than just a trip down memory lane, but a personal exploration. Letting flashes of her own experiences weave through the album, sometimes subtly and at other times starkly, Chan uses the devices of the Mandopop and Cantopop genres to tell her own story; furthering her own understanding of her identity and her relationship with a Hong Kong from her childhood.

Born in Hong Kong but raised in Sydney, Rainbow’s dual identity has been key to her works since her debut in 2012. A critically-acclaimed multi-hyphenate musician, producer, DJ, and visual artist, Chan has built a small but steady niche following within the Asian diaspora for the unique ways she incorporates her heritage into her electronic sound. From exploring her Weitou (indigenous inhabitants of Hong Kong since the Song dynasty) heritage through wider discussions on migration and belonging in previous 2019 album Pillar, to drawing on her childhood experiences of Hong Kong in Stanley (named, Chan told NME, after a kitsch Hong Kong suburb Chan’s parents went to buy denim jeans for their fashion boutique), Chan continues to surprise at every turn with her inventive and emotional works.

In an interview with Electric Soul in November 2021, Chan described Stanley as a collection of colorful, gaudy trinkets whose value is purely sentimental, ornamental, and eventually obsolete. Yet there is value to the nostalgia emanating from the 8-track album, especially for the tribute it pays to pop music gone by.

Inspired by well-known singers of the 80s and 90s (Chan called them “Divas” in an interview with Asian Pop Weekly), such as Teresa Teng, Faye Wong, and Anita Mui, Chan uses a multitude of devices—chord progressions, lyrics, vocal production, instrumentation—to create a skeleton unmistakably based on retro Mandopop and Cantopop ballads: From the mysteriously theatrical “Heavy (沈重),” a rich tapestry of retro synth laden with strings which reminds of the famous wistful strains of “Yumeji’s Theme” from the Palme d’Or-nominated Hong Kong romance In The Mood For Love (2000), to the over-the-top playfulness of the Faye Wong-esque “Idols (偶像).”

Chan’s unique and modern take on a classic sound is born out of the temporal yet fascinating history of Cantopop in Hong Kong, in particular the 1980s and 1990s that were such key decades for the genre.

While the main difference between Cantopop and Mandopop lies in the language it is sung in, the genres have been inextricably linked in the context of Hong Kong; they began to show clearer distinction in the 1970s with early Cantopop drawing from Cantonese Opera and the influence of film and TV.

Following in the footsteps of the unexpected success in the 1970s of local Cantonese content at box offices and on television, Cantopop theme songs for TV shows on TVB (a prominent Hong Kong broadcasting company) such as A Love Tale Between Tears and Smiles began to change local and regional perceptions of the style being vulgar and low-brow.

The proliferation of ground-breaking films such as The House of 72 Tenants (1973) and Games Gamblers Play (1974), and the debut of artists such as Anita Mui, Leslie Cheung, and Sam Hui allowed Cantopop to reach new heights in the 80s and 90s before its untimely decline, brought on by waning public interest and the increasing clout of Mandopop in the region.

For Chan, it was the “Divas” of Cantopop and Mandopop that inspired her contemporary interpretations heard on Stanley, and for good reason too. Despite debuting in an era dominated by male stars (Sam Hui, Leslie Cheung, Alan Tam), artists like Anita Mui with her non gender-conforming and chameleon-like sound, and Teresa Teng (a legendary figure influential in popularizing the genre from the 1970s until her tragic death of an asthma attack in 1995) with her enchanting, honeyed vocals came to define this golden era.