Karen Mok Man-wai reckons much of her career just fell into place. She moved from singing into acting and then songwriting. After releasing Hui Wei, a cover album featuring traditional Chinese folk tunes and popular oldies last year, the two-time Golden Melody Award winner followed up with Precious, for which she wrote all the music. Zhang Yadong, the so-called godfather of mainland pop who was behind several of Faye Wong's best-selling albums, was producer.
Known for her roles in Stephen Chow Sing-chi productions such as God of Cookery and King of Comedy, the 40-year-old has been enjoying her single life after ending a nine-year relationship with actor-director Stephen Fung Tak-lun.
What motivated you to take over all the writing on Precious?
It wasn't a conscious decision. It just happened. We figured it should be an album with new tracks after having done Hui Wei, which covered Chinese oldies. We looked at demos but nothing I heard really hit me.
The first song we wrote was Bao Bei (Precious). It's quite interesting because Zhang Yadong wrote the lyrics - he'd never written lyrics before. I thought maybe I could try to write the melody. Things went on from there It's always fun to do something creative. It's nice when things just evolve. It's a nice surprise. I'm very pleased with the outcome. I like the melody and it's completely different from earlier albums such as Live Is... So, that's kind of nice. If you want to go down the creative path, you want do something different every time. That's how I feel.
What instruments do you use to write music?