Sam Hui

Known in Hong Kong as "the God of Song," singer-songwriter and actor Sam Hui is considered one of the first major stars to emerge from the Cantopop scene. He is also credited with helping modernize the genre, combining elements from Western popular music with humorous social commentary delivered in vernacular Cantonese. The son of a musician and an opera singer, he was born Samuel Hui Koon-kit on September 6, 1948, in Guangzhou, China. After moving with his family to the Hong Kong neighborhood of Diamond Hill in 1950, he went on to graduate from the Faculty of Social Sciences in the late 1960s. It was around this time that he launched his music career, forming the pop-rock band The Lotus and joining the roster of Diamond Records in 1967. Over the next few years, he wrote the theme songs for the comedies produced by his brother Michael and scored his first hit in 1972 with the single "Eiffel Tower Above the Clouds," featured in the Hui Brothers Show. The song helped him get a deal with Polydor Records, which issued his first English single "April Lady" shortly after. Ghost Horse Double Star, his studio debut, appeared in 1974 and served as the unofficial soundtrack for Games Gamblers Play, a comedy he also starred in. However, it was the soundtrack to the 1976 film The Private Eyes that finally thrust him into the spotlight thanks to the poignant social commentary on tracks like "Song of Water Use" and "Could Not Care Less About 1997." He followed this success with the 1978 album God of Wealth, which consisted mainly of Cantonese adaptations of Elvis Presley songs and contained the massively influential New Year's song "The God of Wealth Arrives." Even though Sam Hui officially retired from the music business in 1992, he made a surprise comeback in 2007 with the album Life Is Good.

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