Ricky Hsaio: My Favourite Hokkien Pop Songs

Multilingual vocalist and songwriter Ricky Hsiao has moved audiences for decades with his uplifting, award-winning ballads. His first GMA recognition came in 2003, with him clinching nominations for Best Male Mandarin Singer and Best Lyrics for his debut album You Are My Eyes. Since then, Hsiao has walked away with four GMAs for Best Male Taiwanese Singer and is a three-time winner of Best Taiwanese Album, a category for which he garnered three additional nominations over the years. Hsiao joins Apple Music to recommend the Hokkien-speaking artists he’s most excited about and share his take on Taiwanese music. He starts with the essence of what makes Taiwanese music—to him, this is the relationship the music creates between its emotive lyrics and listeners, and the way it is, in many ways, reminiscent of “home”. “Lyrics often convey the optimism of Taiwanese people, alongside their hardworking nature and unwillingness to give up,” Hsaio says. “The lyrics are able to hit everyone right in the heart.” Hsiao recalls how pop group New Formosa Band was an important influence for him when he first started out in music, particularly due to their humour, sarcasm, and no-holds-barred lyrical style. “Every one of their songs comes from personal stories or reflects their feelings about society. It’s like they’re observers,” Hsiao says. Thinking back on three decades of GMAs, Hsiao notices a marked transition in Taiwanese-language music. “It went from beautiful melodies, lyrics and arrangements—a romantic feel—to being more direct and straightforward, giving us surprises that we’ve never heard before,” Hsiao says, citing the experimental work of Lim Giong and lyrically poignant songs of Jutoupi as paving the way for next generation talents like Fire EX and EggPlantEgg to continue forging ahead. Hsiao points out that electronic music and hip-hop will probably continue to influence Taiwanese pop, but what is more important is that artists dig deep and capture the zeitgeist through language that speaks to every generation. Listen to Ricky Hsiao’s curated playlist to experience the evolutionary journey of Hokkien-language music, while taking a peek at its future horizons.