Shall We Dance? Shall We Talk!

Shall We Dance? Shall We Talk!

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.

Disc 1

Disc 2

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