Dave Wong - Life and Career

Life and Career

Wong was born in Hong Kong, as the son of a former Shaw Brothers actor, Wong Hap. He moved to Taiwan when he was 17. Before landing his first record deal in 1988, Wong wrote songs for other singers under pen-names such as "Little Grass" and "Northern Wind". He worked as a Tae Kwon Do instructor, ice-skating coach, taxi-driver, delivery-man, waiter, bar-tender and cook. He also spent 3 years in the Taiwanese military in order to obtain a Taiwan ID card, despite holding a Hong Kong British passport.

Wong released his Chinese debut album A Game A Dream (一場遊戲一場夢), which sold over 500,000-copies in December 1987, which was used as the theme song in the 1988 telemovie The Game They Call Sex. Another of his hits, "幾分傷心幾分痴" (Bits of Sadness, Bits of Craze), released in 1988, shares the melody and base music of "一場遊戲一場夢" (A Game A Dream) but sung in Cantonese with different lyrics. It was an insert song on Looking Back in Anger and the music video features Yin Szema.

He found success in Hong Kong during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Many of his songs were used as the theme songs of popular TVB series. He is one of the few artists from Republic of China to break into the Hong Kong market, with four years of chart-topping record sales. He is likewise successful in other markets such as Malaysia, Singapore and mainland China.

Wong migrated to Canada in 1994, after his second marriage in 1 April 1993. He carried on releasing 2-Chinese albums a year until 1998. On 1 June 1996, It was moved to officially released a new Chinese album under a different label names Philips Record, which ceased operations in Taiwan in late 1997 due to the Asian financial crisis. Altogether, he had released a total of five Mandarin albums in just a period of two years at Pony Canyon with notable hits like "I Love You (我愛你)".

On 1 January 1999, Wong made a comeback in the Hong Kong music industry and signed a recording contract with Sony Music Entertainment a member of Sony Corporation of America in United States of America and subsidiary of Sony Corporation in Japan. In 1 January 2000, the album Giving was released with a few new songs as well as remixes of his older classics. Following the success of this album, Wong held a major charity concert in late February of the same year at Hong Kong Coliseum in Hong Kong.

Two years later, he released his latest Cantonese album through Sony Music Entertainment called L'amour et le Reve (愛與夢). Around the same time, he participated in various movies including Jackie Chan's New Police Story (新警察故事).

He performed his first Beijing concert on 26 November 2004 and another in Xi'an on 16 September 2006. In 1 January 2007, he released his latest Mandarin album Goodbye Madman (別了瘋子); like his previous Mandarin album Regaining Consciousness (蘇醒), it was not heavily promoted.

After his 10 year contract with EEG expired, Wong held his 'I am Back' Concert on 23 October 2009 at the Hong Kong Coliseum.

He held a series of world tour concerts from August to November 2010 in Beijing, Singapore and Tianjin. He stated during a television interview in July 2010 that he would retire from the music industry after the tour. He then clarified in September that it was only song-writing that he would be leaving, after the completion of the album he was working on, and that he will still continue to perform in concerts.