Is Taiwan’s Yellow 黃宣 the region’s hottest pop artist to watch? Huang Xuan on getting out-Googled by Coldplay, the viral Golden Melody Awards and why he really feels Jack and the Beanstalk – interview

May 10 , 2023

Style caught up with Taiwanese pop act Yellow 黃宣 in Hong Kong. Photo: Puma

When Sony signed Huang at age 17, the music label was keen to turn him into yet another pop idol – but instead he chose to write songs that could sit alongside Frank Ocean or Moses Sumney’s

He recently performed at Hong Kong’s Clockenflap festival during the same time slot as Arctic Monkeys – but it was his awards hosting gig that landed the style icon film offers

There’s a moment midway through my conversation with the artist Yellow 黃宣 where the energy in the room suddenly changes. It’s when I tell him I like his music.

Of course, it’s not unusual for journalists to fawn over their subjects – or to fake fandom for a cynical selfie. But a face of wide-eyed surprise, a forcefully energetic high five, and a collective intake of breath from his entourage, all collectively greet the notion that an English-speaking music writer – let alone a wider international audience – might enjoy the songs of a Taiwanese singer-songwriter, however successful they already are in the Chinese-speaking world.

“Wow, that’s called vibration, it’s beyond languages – that’s true energy,” exclaims the dumbfounded artist, his poise momentarily broken. “You touched me, man. That means a lot to me. I’m so emotional right now, I’m almost crying.”

Huang Xuan aka Yellow behind the scenes at Clockenflap, Hong Kong’s Music & Art Festival at Central Harbourfront, on March 3. Photo: Dickson Lee

It’s also a profound crime, because Yellow’s shape-shifting sonic approach marks him out as among the region’s freshest talents, touting a smart, slick, genre-blurring approach to pop that would snugly slide onto playlists next to Moses Sumney or Frank Ocean.

Whatever his talents, Yellow’s visibility can’t be helped, I point out, by his English stage name. A touching play on his high school nickname it may be – but Google “Yellow music” or “Yellow songs” and you won’t find a trace of the artist born Huang Xuan.

“‘And it was all yellow…’,” sings Huang with a bittersweet laugh. “I’m so frustrated – always when you search ‘yellow’ in Google, every time – Coldplay, Coldplay, Coldplay.” He quickly backtracks, “but I like Coldplay, it doesn’t matter to me.”

Huang Xuan aka Yellow performing at Clockenflap, Hong Kong’s Music & Art Festival at Central Harbourfront, on March 3. Photo: Dickson Lee

Huang, 30, was born into an indigenous family of musicians – his mother is a gospel singer and his sister plays the marimba and works on film scores. Surrounded by music, he showed early songwriting flair, writing his first song at 13, about a girl. A girl that got away? “No!” he declares with unabashed pride. “No girls rejected me, but we stayed together only three months, and I wrote a song about her.” Was it ever released? “No, absolutely no, nooooo.”

That song never saw the light of day – and neither did dozens more tracks he crafted in his teenage years (he’s lost count of his own diary scraps). After winning a nationwide talent contest at the age of 17, Huang was signed by Sony, but the executives held zero interest in his original material, instead preferring to package just another plastic idol.

“They said, ‘The songs you write do not fit you.’ They wanted to put me in some box – but that’s not me,” he remembers over a decade later, with the vividness of one still nursing an open wound. “And at that moment I decided to only play what I truly love and cherish. There was a big passion in that moment, it changed me.”