20/10/2025 (Monday) 13:00-14:00 E21-G002
Hong Kong Canto-pop Songs: Artistes, Themes and Changes in the Past 75 Years
Abstract:
Most studies on Cantonese popular (Canto-pop) songs are qualitative in nature and focus mostly on the lyrics. This study adopts a quantitative approach and uses the song names as data. The objectives are to identify the major themes of Canto-pop songs and find out if there are any trends in the past seven decades. Apart from the numerous song composers, lyricists and singers, we look at the individual Chinese characters (words), phrases and their connections in the song names. Data sources include several major books on the Canto-pop songs, and the yearly Canto-pop charts from four electronic media. The study has identified the top singers, composers and lyricists from 1950s to 2020s. The most common characters in the song titles are tabulated for different decades. Some characters are on the rise while others have decreased over the years. Some individual characters are combined to form meaningful phrases to further explore the themes of Canto-pop songs. Network diagrams are constructed from the commonly used characters to represent the overall scenes in different decades. We can observe clear patterns and changes since the 1950s. The study also discusses whether Canto-pop songs can reflect the society at large, and charts the next phase of the study.
Bio:
Clement Y. K. So (PhD, University of Pennsylvania) is Senior Research Fellow (Faculty of Social Science) and Emeritus Professor (School of Journalism and Communication) at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His major research interests include: Hong Kong press, sociology and politics of news, citation and content analysis, and cultural communication. He was deputy editor-in-chief of Vancouver’s Ming Pao Daily News, reporter of the World Journal, and marketing researcher of HK-TVB. In terms of social service, he is member of Board of Directors of Hong Kong News-Expo, Secretary-General of the Hong Kong Journalism Education Foundation, and executive member of the Hong Kong Press Council. He has authored/co-authored many journal articles, book chapters, books and magazine/newspaper articles.
