G.E.M.
Cantopop diva Gloria Tang Tsz-kei, better known as G.E.M. (“Get Everybody Moving”) found fame at 16. She’s released four albums, has sold-out concerts under her belt, and is also headlining at this year’s Clockenflap Festival. Not bad for a 22-year-old. She tells Andrea Lo how a schoolgirl crush led to her singing career, and all about her love-hate relationship with Hong Kong.
When I was really young, I thought that singers existed inside the TV. I didn’t think I could be one, simply because I thought they were fake. I didn’t even know if Gigi Leung was a real person.
That changed as I grew up. In my sixth grade yearbook, I wrote that I wanted to be a singer.
I wrote a love song for a boy I had a crush on at school. I was too shy to say anything, so I asked him to come see me sing it in a competition as a way of letting him know.
I won the competition—but I was still too scared to tell him how I felt. But that song led to me meeting my manager. That’s how I became a singer.
I’ve talked about this before, but I still don’t know if he knows it was him.
I didn’t know I was doing Clockenflap until I saw myself on the poster. I called the office and said, “What! We’re going to Clockenflap?”
