Relax. Don't worry about Emil Chau trying
to be serious. He can't bear to be serious for very long. The
Taiwan-based singer, 37, tried to change his style at the Singapore
Indoor Stadium on Thursday. But he couldn't hold out. By the
end of the three-hour show, he was chatting, joking, blowing
kisses, going wild. And so were his fans. Emil told the crowd:
"I've been pretending to be gentle earlier and it was so
difficult to endure. The party's really only starting now!"
The 9,000-strong audience clapped and sang along, relieved to see the real Emil. "I love hearing his funny banter," said administrative officer Phoebe Song. "I can always listen to his albums if I only want to hear him sing." Loss adjuster Constance Chong said, "He was not his natural self when he tried to be serious and the atmosphere was tense. Only during encore was he his usual self as he yakked away." Emil usually goes in for small talk with fans and they lap up his jokes and stories.
MORE
SONGS, LESS TALK
But this time in
an effort to deliver what he called a more professional act,
he tried more songs and less talk. He failed to strike a chord
with the crowd. To his credit, though, the "Heavenly
King Killer" produced pitch-perfect renditions of Little Paradise,
Love Follows
Us, Friends,
Finally
and a beautiful a capella version of Tomorrow I Will Marry You.
Halfway through the show, he
moved aside for his guest star, Taiwanese rocker Wu Bai, who performed Love's End and
Wanderer's Love Song. When Emil came on again, clad in
a tight T-shirt, bermudas and track shoes "to match Wu Bai's
casual outfit," the two exchanged good-natured ribbing.
Before they started singing Lonely Eyes, Wu Bai took a swipe at Emil,
who's known for forgetting his lyrics, and said that he had forgotten
the words
of the song. The crew fished out a song sheet, only to hear
Emil assure his fans, who were in stitches by then, that he had
memorised the lyrics. The mood became more relaxed thereafter.
The high point came during the encore, when he pranced, waved energetically and blew kisses to the crowd. He crooned Let Me Be Happy, Let Me Be Sad to a female fan, who thrilled him with her deafening scream. Now if only he'd gone wild right from the start!
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