A Song a day: 7th May 2012 (如無意外 – Denise Ho/孤身走我路

Today’s song is “如無意外” by Denise Ho (a.k.a. Hocc). This song came out in 2005, in an album called “艷光四射”. I still remember how happy I was when I bought the album, it was the second Denise’s album that I got. The direct English translation of the song’s title is “If there was no accident”.

From memory, this song came out around a month after Denise’s teacher Anita Mui passed away. Anita was a very famous singer in Hong Kong and in the Chinese community. Denise was her only female student. “如無意外” is written in memory of Anita Mui. If you are familiar with Anita’s songs, you would probably realise that the starting melody of “如無意外”actually mimic Anita’s “孤身走我路” melody (“孤身走我路” direct English translation is “Walking alone”). The reason is that when Denise was young, she went to Anita’s concert, she heard “孤身走我路”, the song touches her deeply and Anita became her idol ever since. Later on, Denise jointed a singing contest that was hosted by TVB. The first winner of the singer contest was Anita Mui, and for the year Denise jointed, the award for the winner was Anita’s dress that she worn when she was in the contest. I think it was because of the price and the chance to meet Anita that attracted Denise to join the competition, and of cause Denise won, and later on she became Anita’s student. Back to the song, at first I didn’t quite understand what’s the lyrics was talking about (well, more specifically, how it was related to Anita) as I wasn’t a fans of Anita. But after reading a few articles, I realised that it was actually about Anita’s love story. In the lyrics, it talks about a girl sitting on an aircraft think about her past. The journey is long, and she sort of regret that she got on the plane. Her reason of getting on the plane was that she didn’t feel stratified by just having him by her side. She thinks if she didn’t get onto this journey, she would probably be waiting him to come back from work and plan the wedding, they could have kids by now. But now, she is on this journey and there is no turning back. Her journey has made them far away from each other and now they are living in 2 completely different worlds. So I think this song somewhat corresponds to Anita’s “孤身走我路”, it give the story another dimension, it added information to the story. While Anita’s “孤身走我路” talks about how the protagonist (possibly Anita herself) feels by taking on her musical journey, while Denise’s “如無意外” tell us the sacrifice the protagonist made to get onto the journey. I think both songs need to be listened together so I have put link to both of the songs below. Hope you will enjoy them.