PUBLISHED ONJanuary 17, 2022 10:00 AMByBryan LimSet against the backdrop of the HSBC Rain Vortex at Jewel Changi Airport, local songbird Joanna Dong performed a cover of Moonlight in the City in April last year during Star Awards.
Though the 40-year-old kept her rendition a ballad — albeit with a dash of her distinctive jazzy style mixed in — the backlash came swiftly and furiously.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5VdFaeQeOQ[/embed]
Netizens accused her of destroying the song, made personal attacks and called for the original singer Mavis Hee to perform it instead
For the uninitiated, Moonlight in the City is the theme song of the 1996 Channel 8 drama Tofu Street, but has gone on to captivate the hearts and minds of Singaporeans and people in the region.
Back in April, Joanna spoke out about the "brutal" comments hurled at her and admitted that she cried over them.
And though eight months have passed since that incident, she told AsiaOne that it still haunts her to some extent.
During an interview for her upcoming Lunar New Year concert You Must Believe in Spring, she shared: "I'm always going to resent it. Let's just be honest. I've moved on but it's always going to bug me a little bit.
"Even now when I reinterpret classics, it will always be at the back of my mind. Like, is this going to be another Moonlight in the City saga where people are going to hate it?"
[embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/CNz1UIYswR1/[/embed]
After so long, most people might try to play it cool, but Joanna wasn't afraid to show that there is still some residual anger and hurt. She is human, after all.
But she's also not a babe in the woods.
Having been a performer for more than 10 years, with her appearance on the second season of Sing! China further boosting her popularity, Joanna was prepared for some criticism — something she also acknowledged in her reply in April.
However, she admitted that she didn't anticipate criticisms about her singing as it was something she was confident in and that caught her off guard.
She said: "Anytime you do a big show and it's going on something like Facebook, where there is already a culture of trolling and a lot of negative comments, I was already bracing myself. But I was bracing myself that people would criticise how I looked because that's what female artistes usually get from Star Awards...
"I was kind of self-conscious. I put on bit of weight during the pandemic and so I thought they're going to say I'm ugly, right? So I was prepared for that. But I was not prepared that people hated my singing, because I think that was where I was more confident."
Joanna added: "Then also for people to say I ruined the song, that was the one that hurt me — to say I ruined the song when I had actually gone through so much effort to pay a tribute to it. I think that's what really broke my heart and made me angry."
Paid for a Chinese orchestra
When Joanna said she went through "so much effort" for her cover of Moonlight in the City, she really meant it.
In fact, she revealed that she engaged a Chinese orchestra as part of the music arrangement and it came out of her budget.
[[nid:560549]]
She recalled: "The organisers also said, 'Oh, it's (Star Awards) a grand affair... so we want the music to sound grand.' That's also when we actually recorded a string orchestra. The strings were recorded by an orchestra from China via Zoom."
What others might also not know is that Joanna had the same reverence for the song and the goal was to make a respectable tribute, which she felt she had achieved.
Joanna added: "Believe it or not, in my discussion with my music director who did the arrangement, we said, 'Hey, this is a well-beloved classic, let's not change it too much... It should still be a lovely ballad, it should still be a slow song.'"
"I took [the criticisms] very personally, because by my standards, that was a very conservative rearrangement. By my standards, we had put in so much effort into preparing the music. I needn't have spent that money on the orchestra. I could have just made a bigger profit."
Losing 90 per cent of her income
Like many other performers, the pandemic that swept through the globe decimated 90 per cent of her income as it came from gigs and live performances.
She said: "It has been very challenging, but the reality is, who didn't have a challenging past few years? I share it only because I think I want to acknowledge the challenge. I don't want to pretend like everything is okay.
"What I want people to understand is, if an artiste who's already clawed her way to the level that I'm at, has found it so tough this past two years, can you imagine the rest of the industry?"
That said, she acknowledged that she is privileged because her husband has a job so she "didn't stop eating well or living comfortably" despite the loss of income.
"Mentally, that was where I struggled the most... to suddenly have everything that you felt represented you as a person — most of my self-worth came from my value as a performer — and to have that kind of suddenly taken away from me was tough."
So when the opportunity came for her to stage her Lunar New Year concert, Joanna seized it even though she only had a two-month lead time.
She pointed out that having that opportunity was a privilege as others may not get one and she had "no reason not to try".
With You Must Believe in Spring, Joanna is bringing her theatrical experience to the show and she's even directing it. It's even been described as an "atypical" concert.
[embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/CYsSldDvOxw/[/embed]
Although, she clarified that it's atypical "mostly in the aesthetics and how it will look like". She said that one rarely sees a concert with a set and this time, they not only have one, they're also collaborating with a set designer.
It'll consist of items that one will see during Lunar New Year but it'll be interpreted and presented in a different way.
She said: "We're doing that with a music arrangement as well. So you're going to take the classic Chinese new songs, and then perform it in a way that [makes you go] 'Huh? It's that song?'...
"If you're already a fan, this will be right up your alley, because it's my signature, very jazz-pop kind of approach. There'll be a bit of like Latin, there's swing. But also, there's going to be medleys and mash ups, which is also very my thing."
You Must Believe in Spring will be held from Jan 21 to 22 at the Sands Theatre and you can book tickets here.
bryanlim@asiaone.com