The Songs

If you only play one, play 海闊天空.

He wrote more than a hundred songs. These are six. I have put the Chinese titles next to the English ones because the English ones are translations and nobody I know actually calls them that.

海闊天空 — Boundless Oceans, Vast Skies (1993)

The last one. It came out the year he died. If you have ever been a long way from where your family is from, and felt like you owed somebody an explanation for it, then this is already your song and you just have not heard it yet.

原諒我這一生不羈放縱愛自由

Which is something like: forgive me, all my life, for this unruly indulgence, for loving freedom this much. My translation is not good. No translation of this line is good.

光輝歲月 — Glorious Years (1990)

He wrote this about Nelson Mandela. A Cantonese pop song, released in Hong Kong, about apartheid, and it won him a best lyrics award. When I tell people at school that a Hong Kong rock band had a hit about South Africa in 1990 they look at me as though I am making it up on the spot.

Amani (1991)

Amani is the Swahili word for peace. Beyond went to Kenya in 1991, and he saw what poverty looks like when it is standing in front of you instead of being on the news, and this is what he wrote when he got home. Afterwards they started a foundation. Nobody made him do that.

真的愛你 — Really Love You (1989)

This one is about his mother. It is the one that gets put on at family gatherings, and it is the one that makes the room go quiet, and if you have a Cantonese family you already know exactly what I mean.

喜歡你 — Like You (1988)

Early, and much quieter than the rest of them. It is the one I put on when I have decided not to be sad about this today. It does not work.

不再猶豫 — No More Hesitation (1991)

I am ending on this one on purpose. He was thirty-one and he was not finished, and the song is about not waiting around, and I do not think I need to join those two things up for you.

If any of this landed, please sign my guestbook. It is very quiet in there.