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Paige Su Lets Someone Else Play Guitar 蘇珮卿《The Best of the Worst of Times》:她終於肯讓人幫忙了

蘇珮卿 — The Best of the Worst of Times · 2026

October 11, 2026

In March of 2023, Atwood Magazine ran a feature on You'll Live Forever in My Songs, the second album by the Taiwanese singer-songwriter Paige Su (蘇珮卿), and praised its song "This Is Trouble" for "a breathtaking series of electric guitar sol 製作名單比通稿老實。

蘇珮卿 — The Best of the Worst of Times
Album cover of The Best of the Worst of Times by Paige Su
The cover of The Best of the Worst of Times, photographed by Su's son, KK. Photo: Siren Song Music

In March of 2023, Atwood Magazine ran a feature on You'll Live Forever in My Songs, the second album by the Taiwanese singer-songwriter Paige Su (蘇珮卿), and praised its song "This Is Trouble" for "a breathtaking series of electric guitar solos." Su's own track notes, on the same page, do not quite agree: "No electric guitars used in this track." The distortion was her electric harp, which, she wrote, "represents the power I put into fighting the battle." The battle was with illness.

Nobody comes out of this badly. A harp that can pass for a guitar has been asked to do a great deal, and for most of her career Su has asked a great deal of hers. On her third album, The Best of the Worst of Times, released on September 25th, the electric-guitar credits go to guitarists and the lyric credits to a small crowd. The exception is the last song before the bonus track, which the credits give to her alone.

A Harp in Disguise

Su is from Taipei and studied classical piano and flute from childhood, then took a degree in flute and harp performance at the University of North Texas, where, a 2014 concert listing says, she "explored jazz and ethnic music from around the world." The English-language channel TaiwanPlus later summed her up neatly: she "always wanted to be a rocker even though she grew up studying Classical music."

The rocker took the long way round. She went repeatedly to South India to study the Carnatic flute and, per the 2019 Golden Melody Festival's showcase notes, to Indonesia, and both gamelan and Carnatic music found their way into her songwriting. With Cody Byassee, an American drummer she met while studying in the U.S. and later married, she joined Coromandel Express, named for an Indian express train between Kolkata and Chennai; two bandmates represented North India, while Su, on flutes, harp and vocals, and Byassee, on kanjira, represented the South. A classical flautist from Taipei standing in for South India sounds like a category error. In retrospect, it looks like a preview.

She also sang jazz, briefly, before deciding, in the festival notes' words, that she "had a lot more to say through her original music." In 2011 she self-produced a four-song EP, 《格格不入》 (Heterogeneous), as a singer-songwriter accompanying herself on harp. One song, "Break Out (The Chicken Song)," was written, TaiwanPlus reports, when she moved back to the port city of Keelung, where chickens woke the street market every morning and the clucking turned into a rhythm that inspired the song. I can think of worse origin stories for a conservatory ear.

By 2014 she was fronting a band, the Flying Monkeys, with herself billed on "vocal & elec. harp," and a song from that year's single, 〈跨越藩籬〉 ("Over the Fence"), won Best Stylized Single at the 6th Golden Indie Music Awards, in 2015. The 2019 festival notes observed that, "in lieu of strumming a guitar," Su played electric harp through effects pedals, ranging from "dreamy Björk-like tapestries" to "electro-rock beats a la St. Vincent." I never found her explaining why she plugged it in; one sees only the result: the orchestra's most decorous instrument, at the volume of a rock band.

Paige Su singing beside a harp on stage
Su singing beside a harp on stage; date and place unknown. Photo: via New Asia Chamber Music Society

A Phone Full of Songs

Her first full-length album, 《我們都是寂寞的》 (We Are All Lonely Souls), came out on Sony Music Taiwan in 2017 and earned her a Best New Artist nomination at the 29th Golden Melody Awards. She has since been frank: she "didn't have total say in the final product," she told Atwood, and the record was "tailored towards the Mandopop market," which "just wasn't for me." She wishes she could redo it. Few artists say that about a debut, in print.

At the end of 2019, while working on the pop singer Yoga Lin's (林宥嘉) "idol" tour, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. With the pandemic halting work, she turned to face it; treatment lasted more than a year, and she has recalled losing all her hair, down to her eyelashes. At one point she believed her life in music was over, and that she might as well "go sell houses." (Her remarks to Chinese-language outlets are in my translation.)

Early in 2021 the songs came back, sometimes in the middle of the night, and she caught them with her phone's voice-memo app: more than ten in about a month. By 2023, a report noted, her phone held seven hundred melodies.

In February 2022, at her first concert since going independent, in the recording studio of the YuCheng Cinema (玉成戲院), Byassee's drums sat in a little house at center stage, and Su joked that her husband spent the night "sitting in a shrine." The show won Best Live Performance at the 13th Golden Indie Music Awards.

You'll Live Forever in My Songs, released in 2023, was her first album entirely in English, and she played nearly everything on it: "Harp, piano, Rhodes, flutes, programmed beats, etc." It opens with the phone demo of its title song, her husband and son chatting in the background as they made breakfast, and closes with the finished song, its bridge sung by friends and family who recorded their parts on their phones, "in true pandemic style." The album, she told Atwood, felt "more like a debut album to me."

On October 28, 2023, it won Best Album and Best Singer-Songwriter at the 14th Golden Indie Music Awards; in 2024 it was nominated for Album of the Year at the 35th Golden Melody Awards. On a trip to play New York after its release, the Taiwanese music site Blow (吹音樂) reports, she decided to live there, and in 2025 the family moved to New York from Keelung.

A Studio Full of Other Hands

She had not planned to make another album. What she wanted, Blow reports, was to meet musicians in her new city, and in a video of the New Zealand singer Kimbra performing she noticed a producer playing an old organ. She messaged him to ask if he'd like to talk. They hit it off.

He was Benjamin Lazar Davis, of Okkervil River and of Cuddle Magic, a band he co-founded with fellow students at the New England Conservatory; he had co-written, co-produced and toured Joan As Police Woman's 2016 album, Let It Be You. He lives in Los Angeles and keeps a studio in Pasadena. They made the title track remotely first, as a test; then he invited her west, and she spent two weeks in his studio, "almost cut off from the world," she said, but waking each day to music. The body of the album took shape there.

Paige Su with Benjamin Lazar Davis
Su with Benjamin Lazar Davis. Photo: via Blow 吹音樂

Blow's interviewer writes that this was the first time Su had co-written her own work with anyone. That needs an asterisk: the lyrics of 〈寧靜海〉 ("Sea of Tranquility"), her 2017 duet with Michael Wong (光良), were by the singer Qing Feng (青峰), who volunteered for the job. Still, last time someone offered her words; this time she held the door open. The lyric credits on the ten album tracks name three people besides Su and Davis.

The first is Davis's older brother, Tim Davis, an artist and professor. "Letting Go (and Getting Let Go)" began with a guitar part of Benjamin's; Su hummed a melody over it, and soon only the words were missing. Benjamin suggested his brother. By Blow's account, the music went to Tim in the morning and the lyrics came back in the afternoon; in Su's telling, on Apple Music, "we had the song recorded by evening." For someone schooled in a conservatory, that pace is close to indecent. The lyric begins with Shel Silverstein, author of The Giving Tree ("Hoping you remember how to climb me"), and Su frames the song as a question: letting go, or being let go?

The second is Taylor Ashton (credited as Ashton Taylor), the husband, Blow notes, of Lake Street Dive's lead singer, who co-wrote the English words of "Losing and Finding." Su says her songs have always been about "me"; this time she wanted the words to be "bigger than myself." Her last album, she said, was about an inner illness, a subject others could hardly join in on.

The third name is the most familiar. Byassee has a lyric credit on "Rally Cry," though he is not among its three credited performers: Su, Will Graefe on electric guitar, and Davis on pump organ. That organ is the kind she first saw Davis play, and in choosing its sound she thought of Radiohead's "Motion Picture Soundtrack," the last song on Kid A, for which, per Wikipedia, Thom Yorke recorded it on a pedal organ and the band added harp samples. A harpist taking her organ cue from a song that had to borrow its harp: I enjoy the symmetry.

Among the players, Will Graefe, Maya Hawke's music director per the vinyl pre-order copy, plays guitar on nine tracks. Ian Chang, the drummer in Son Lux, is credited on the title track with exactly one thing: bass drum. I admire the extravagance. The largest share of the rhythm section, as the copy says and the credits bear out, is still Byassee's.

The title track was written in 2020, during her treatment, and began as a piano demo. Blow's writer calls what Davis made of it a 醉鄉民謠, also the Taiwanese release title of the Coen brothers' Inside Llewyn Davis. That year, Su says, really was the worst of times, and also a year of good friends, camping trips and time to cook properly, a simplicity that seemed to vanish once the world reopened. For "Repeated Stories," she wanted some St. Vincent electricity, seven years after the festival notes made that comparison for her.

"Every Second's A Treasure," the first single, goes back about ten years, maybe more, to a harp-and-flute demo that sat, she says, in a corner of her computer until she "unlocked" it last year. While recording, she and Davis kept the same picture in mind: a video game, a jet ski, glittering water. Her favorite part is where the drums come in, late, and things go a little crazy. The drums are Byassee's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3-OpwyrbNk

Single cover of Every Second's A Treasure: present-day Paige Su overlaid with her childhood photo
The single cover of "Every Second's A Treasure" layers two photographs: Su as a child, taken, in her words, by "the family who raised me," and Su now, taken by "the child I raised." Photo: Siren Song Music

"Thank You Life" is furnished, Blow's writer notes, with ordinary things (a rattan chair, a coffee stain, a "happy birthday"), each carrying, for Su, a past that is hard to talk about. The song, she says, needed "very, very deep darkness" before it could say thank you. In 2023 she said that a body able to drink a cup of coffee is a remarkable thing. Three years later, a coffee stain turns up in a song.

"After All These Years" dates from her college years and got new Chinese lyrics this year. Its first half, she says, is about a classical musician determined to go their own way, who doesn't much want to, deep down, and can't let go after more than ten years of practice. That, she adds, is very twenty-something; she describes the musician in the third person, which is one way of getting through one's twenties.

A Cassette That Never Was

The album, Blow's writer observes, gets "older" as it nears the end: the opener from 2020, "Every Second's A Treasure" from a decade or more ago, "After All These Years" from college. The vinyl pre-order copy opens with Kierkegaard's thought that life is lived forward and understood backward, and the running order takes him at his word.

Then comes "Reunion," and the credits shrink. Composer, lyricist, vocals, piano, programming, producer: Paige Su. After her name there is only a mastering engineer, Joe Lambert, and no line for a mixer at all. The vocal was recorded about ten years ago, and the original file was run through reel-to-reel tape to sound like a cassette. She could have sung it again. She aged it instead. The song, she says, has much to do with her mother, who left when Su was very young; as an ending, it is a reunion, and "someday we will meet again." Apple Music's album notes call it a jazz miniature.

That is where the album proper ends. The first vinyl edition adds a seven-inch of 〈生活中的幽默感〉 ("Daily Humor"), also streaming as track eleven: a duet with the rapper 李英宏 (DJ Didilong). Su wrote it about ten years ago, while stuck, at her own expense: the shops she likes always close, the songs she likes never sell. She had no plans to release it until her son heard it and liked it. At 5:28, the joke is the longest track on the record.

The map is easy enough to draw: a first album shaped for a market she says wasn't hers, a second she played almost entirely herself, a third opened to other people's words. More than two weeks after release, the Chinese-language coverage I could find still filed it under recovery ("returns to music after beating cancer," ran one headline) and drew largely on two press releases; I found no independent reviews in either language. In the second of them, Su recommended the album for the Mid-Autumn holiday on which it came out, a holiday of reunions. Its last song proper is called "Reunion," and it keeps a vocal she recorded about ten years ago, on a tape that was never a cassette.

https://open.spotify.com/album/78IWfjYobSvYfb2zQDXS91


Sources: Apple Music album notes and per-track credits for The Best of the Worst of Times; Blow 吹音樂 interview by 阿哼 (Oct. 2, 2026) and news items (Sept. 11, Sept. 24); the vinyl pre-order copy (FIGHT30); Atwood Magazine (Mar. 9, 2023); TaiwanPlus, Taiwan Calling Ep. 5 (2024); GigGuide Taiwan concert listings (2011–14); 30th Golden Melody Festival showcase notes (2019); The Next Big Thing program notes (2013); reports in SETN, TVBS, NOWnews, CNA via Global Views, The News Lens and Mirror Media (2015–2026); Wikipedia entries for Benjamin Lazar Davis and Kid A, and Chinese Wikipedia for Inside Llewyn Davis. Quotations from Chinese-language sources are my translations, as are the English glosses of Chinese song titles other than "Daily Humor."

《The Best of the Worst of Times》專輯封面
專輯封面,由兒子 KK 掌鏡。圖/賽蓮音樂 Siren Song Music

製作名單比通稿老實。

《The Best of the Worst of Times》前九首,製作人欄並排兩個名字:蘇珮卿,Benjamin Lazar Davis。再往下拉,是吉他、Moog、腳踏風琴、鼓,一長串外國樂手。

第十首〈Reunion〉,名單忽然變短。詞、曲、人聲、鋼琴、編程、製作,全寫她一個人。後面只跟著一位母帶工程師。混音師那一欄,乾脆沒有。

熱鬧了九首。最後一首,她把門帶上。

這是蘇珮卿(Paige Su)的第三張專輯,2026 年 9 月 25 日發行。上一張,她幾乎每樣樂器都自己彈。這一張,她把歌交出去:交給製作人,交給樂手,交給製作人的哥哥去填詞。

交出去,又在最後收回來。一個學院訓練出來的人,學會放手,比學會一樣新樂器難。

插電的豎琴

站在豎琴旁演唱的蘇珮卿
站在豎琴旁演唱的蘇珮卿,拍攝時地不詳。圖/翻攝自 New Asia Chamber Music Society 活動頁

說到豎琴,我先想到天使。蘇珮卿替它插了電。

她是臺北人,從小學鋼琴、長笛,走正統古典的路。後來到美國北德州大學,主修長笛與豎琴演奏,在學校裡也鑽研爵士和世界各地的民族音樂。留學那幾年,她認識了鼓手 Cody,中文名白克迪。三立的報導寫得俏皮:這位洋夫婿,是她從美國「娶」回臺灣的。

TaiwanPlus 說得準:從小學古典,卻一直想當搖滾樂手。

她多次旅居南印度,學卡納提克(Carnatic)長笛。她和 Cody 都是 Coromandel Express 的團員,團名取自印度一班特快列車。團裡兩位代表北印度,她和 Cody 代表南印度:她吹長笛、彈豎琴、唱歌,Cody 打康吉拉鼓。

一個臺北出身的古典長笛手,在臺灣的舞臺上代表南印度。這個畫面,預告了她後來的音樂:錯位,但認真。

2011 年 8 月,她自製自發第一張 EP《格格不入》,從演奏家變成彈著豎琴、唱自己歌的人。其中〈Break Out (The Chicken Song)〉,TaiwanPlus 說是她搬回基隆時寫的:每天早上,雞把整條市場街吵醒,一再重複的雞叫,成了啟發這首歌的節奏。

學院練出來的耳朵,在菜市場的雞叫裡聽出拍子。我喜歡這個起點。

2014 年底,她帶著樂團 The Flying Monkeys 演出,自己唱歌、彈電豎琴。那年 9 月的單曲《起飛》裡,〈跨越藩籬〉隔年拿下第 6 屆金音獎最佳風格類型單曲。2019 年金曲國際音樂節的 showcase 寫,別人刷吉他,她選電豎琴,再接上效果器;同一段文字,拿 Björk 和 St. Vincent 來比她。

記住 St. Vincent。七年後,這個名字會再出現。

為什麼偏偏是電豎琴,我沒找到她本人的解釋。只看得到結果:最古典的一件樂器,被她拉進搖滾樂團的音量。

過期的底片

《You'll Live Forever in My Songs》封面
《You'll Live Forever in My Songs》封面,用父親家找到的老底片相機與過期底片拍成。圖/賽蓮音樂 Siren Song Music

2017 年,首張專輯《我們都是寂寞的》在 Sony Music 發行。〈寧靜海〉由青峰填詞、光良合唱。隔年,她入圍第 29 屆金曲獎最佳新人。

這張首作,她後來自己下了判決。2023 年她對 Atwood Magazine 說,那時有唱片合約,歌都是她寫的,最後的成品卻做不了全部的主;整張偏向為華語流行市場量身訂做,不適合她。她甚至希望能重做一次。

2019 年底,她確診乳癌。當時她正跟著林宥嘉的 idol 巡迴演唱會工作,曾邊工作邊痛哭。碰上疫情蔓延,工作停了,她才正視治療這件事,前後一年多。她後來說,頭髮掉光了,連睫毛都沒了;治療期間一度以為音樂生命要結束,甚至想過「以後乾脆去賣房子」。

一個長笛與豎琴演奏學位的主人,想過去賣房子。

2021 年初,靈感回來了,有時在半夜。她用手機的語音備忘錄趕緊錄下,大約一個月寫了十多首歌。到 2023 年,她手機裡存著七百條旋律。

2021 年秋天的英文單曲〈This Is Trouble〉將近八分鐘,沒用一把電吉他。她對 Atwood 說,那些失真的搖滾聲響全是電豎琴,代表她投進那場仗的力氣。插電的豎琴,到這裡才有了非插電不可的理由。

2022 年 2 月,她在玉成戲院錄音室辦了轉為獨立製作後的第一場音樂會。Cody 的鼓為了收音,擺進舞臺中央的一間小房子,她笑說老公整晚「坐在神壇裡面」。那場演出拿下第 13 屆金音獎最佳現場演出。

2023 年 2 月,第二張專輯《You'll Live Forever in My Songs》發行,全英文。豎琴、鋼琴、Rhodes、長笛、編程節拍,她幾乎全部自己來。第一軌是寫歌當下的手機 demo,背景裡先生和兒子一邊做早餐、一邊聊天。收尾的同名曲,橋段大合唱是三級警戒時,世界各地的親友各用手機錄下自己那一段,再拼起來。

開頭一支手機,結尾幾十支手機。

封面,是用父親家找到的一臺二十多年前的老相機、過期二十年以上的底片拍成。一張從死亡幽谷走回來的專輯,封面用的是比那場病老得多的底片。

她說,這張反而更像她的出道作。那年她跑了七個城市的小巡迴,6 月加場,其中一場選在和信醫院,為醫護和癌友唱。2023 年 10 月 28 日,第 14 屆金音獎,這張拿下最佳專輯與最佳創作歌手;隔年,入圍第 35 屆金曲獎年度專輯。

然後,她搬家了。Blow 吹音樂的專訪寫,二專發行後她到紐約演出,那一趟就認定要住在這座城市。2025 年,一家人從基隆搬到紐約。

外人的筆跡

蘇珮卿與 Benjamin Lazar Davis
蘇珮卿與 Benjamin Lazar Davis。圖/翻攝自 Blow 吹音樂

搬到紐約,她本來沒打算再做專輯,只想認識當地的音樂人。她在紐西蘭歌手 Kimbra 的演出影片裡,看見一個彈老風琴的製作人,透過網路傳訊息,問他有沒有興趣聊聊。一拍即合。

那人是 Benjamin Lazar Davis,Okkervil River 和 Cuddle Magic 的團員。Joan As Police Woman 的《Let It Be You》,他參與共同寫歌、錄音、製作,還跟著巡演。他住洛杉磯,在帕薩迪納(Pasadena)有自己的錄音室。

兩人先隔著洛杉磯和紐約,遠端做了一首〈The Best of the Worst of Times〉試默契。之後 Benjamin 邀她飛去西岸,她在他的錄音室待了兩週。新聞稿引她的話:那兩週幾乎與世隔絕,每天醒來,就是音樂。專輯的主體,在那兩週成形。

兩人有個製作共識:人聲不多修飾,就算用電子,也串進真實樂器的取樣。她要整張專輯像「一張張照片」。

又是照片。二專封面用過期底片,三專封面由兒子掌鏡。她的專輯,一直在跟相機說話。

Blow 的專訪說,在洛杉磯那兩週,她第一次和別人合寫個人作品。這句要打個小折扣:2017 年〈寧靜海〉的詞就出自青峰,當年是青峰毛遂自薦。差別在主動權。上一次,是別人遞詞過來;這一次,是她開門,讓人進來動筆。

正片十首的作詞欄裡,除了她和 Benjamin,還多了三個名字。

第一個是 Tim Davis,Benjamin 的哥哥,藝術家,也是教授。第三首〈Letting Go (and Getting Let Go)〉從 Benjamin 的一段吉他開始,她跟著哼出主旋律,很快就寫好,只差歌詞。Benjamin 建議找哥哥試試。早上交曲,下午詞就傳回來,晚上歌就錄好了。

對一個古典科班出身的人,這個速度近乎冒犯。

詞的開頭,從《愛心樹》的作者 Shel Silverstein 寫起,有一句「Hoping you remember how to climb me」。她談這首歌,第一句是:「放下,還是被放下?」越想靠近一個人,對方越走越遠,像收音機慢慢收不到臺,「只剩下雜音」。

第二個是 Taylor Ashton,Blow 介紹他是 Lake Street Dive 主唱的先生,第五首〈Losing and Finding〉的英文詞與他合寫。她說自己主觀意識很強,歌一向都在講「我」,這次想讓詞「大於我自己」。上一張談的是內在的疾病,別人很難插話。這一張,她讓出一點位子。這首她還加了玩具鋼琴和 Moog。

第三個名字最熟:Cody Byassee。第六首〈Rally Cry〉的作詞欄有他,演奏名單裡卻沒有他,只有三個人:她唱歌、做編程,Will Graefe 彈電吉他,Benjamin 彈腳踏風琴。那架風琴,正是她最初注意到 Benjamin 時他彈的那種。挑音色時,她想到 Radiohead 的〈Motion Picture Soundtrack〉,就決定是它。

維基百科記載,那首歌寫在〈Creep〉之前,《OK Computer》時期錄過一版鋼琴;到了《Kid A》,Thom Yorke 改用腳踏風琴,樂團再加上豎琴取樣。Radiohead 拿它給《Kid A》收尾。她借它的音色,開 B 面。

Will Graefe 彈了九首吉他,黑膠文案介紹他是 Maya Hawke 的音樂總監。Son Lux 的鼓手 Ian Chang,在開場曲只記了一項:大鼓。這種奢侈,我喜歡。節奏組比重最大的,仍是 Cody:第四、五、七首和 bonus 曲的鼓,都是他。

開場曲寫於 2020 年她在疫情裡抗癌的日子,原本是鋼琴 demo,經 Benjamin 轉化,成了 Blow 記者口中的「醉鄉民謠」。她說那年確實是 worst of times,可身邊有一群很好的朋友,常一起去露營,她也有時間陪家人好好煮飯。疫情過後,那份單純好像跟著消失了。

把抗癌的一年寫成懷念,需要很硬的骨頭。

第二首〈Repeated Stories〉,她「私心超愛」。它在現場用大豎琴演了很多年,搬到紐約後又重編一次。這次她希望它前衛一點,帶點 St. Vincent 的電氣味;錄到一半,Benjamin 提議找個厲害的 bass moog,找來的是他的朋友 Zach Tenorio-Miller。她也第一次用上 vocoder。

2019 年,別人拿 St. Vincent 比她。2026 年,她自己點了這個名字。

第四首〈Every Second's A Treasure〉,9 月 4 日先發。雛形是十年前、甚至更早的事,在電腦某個角落一直擱到去年才「解鎖」。錄音時,她和 Benjamin 腦中是同一個畫面:打電動,騎水上摩托車,在閃閃發亮的水面上往前衝。她最愛後段鼓一進來、「瘋瘋癲癲」的地方。這首的鼓,credits 上只有 Cody 一人。

單曲封面是兩張照片疊在一起。一張是她小時候,由「養育我的家人」拍下;一張是現在的她,由「我養育的孩子」拍下。兩個時間疊進同一個畫面,誰也不必讓位。

〈Thank You Life〉裡,Blow 的記者挑出三樣東西:藤椅,咖啡漬,生日快樂。她說,這首歌有「很深很深的黑暗」,才說得出謝謝。2023 年她說過,身體能讓你喝一杯咖啡,是多了不起的事。三年後,歌裡出現咖啡漬。

第九首〈After All These Years〉大學時就寫好了,今年才填進中文新詞。她說,前半段寫一個執念很深的古典樂手,想走自己的路,心裡明明沒那麼想走,只是「練了樂器十幾年放不下」。那是二十幾歲的心態。

回頭看第一節那份履歷。鋼琴,長笛,豎琴,南印度。我把這句話,讀成整張專輯的註腳。

做舊的卡帶

Blow 的記者寫,這張專輯越到尾聲,歌越「老」。黑膠文案開頭引了齊克果:「生命必須向前走,理解卻得回頭看。」

這張專輯照字面做了。曲序往前走,記憶往回退,一路退到她很小的時候。

〈Reunion〉裡,一段約十年前的人聲,原檔送進盤帶再處理,做成一卷卡帶的聲音。她大可以重唱一遍。

她沒有。

做舊,是承認時間。有些東西修得太好,就不像真的了。她說,這首和媽媽有關,媽媽在她很小的時候就離開了;作為 ending,就是重逢,有一天還是會重逢。Apple Music 的專輯介紹稱它「爵士小品」。

正片在這裡結束。黑膠收藏版另附一張 7 吋,放的是〈生活中的幽默感〉,和李英宏(DJ Didilong)對唱。十年前她寫歌卡關,隨手寫了這首自嘲歌:「喜歡的店總是會倒」「喜歡的歌總是不會賣」。本來沒打算發,兒子聽了喜歡,她才決定做。

全專輯最長的一首,就是這首隨手寫的玩笑歌,五分二十八秒。一張從抗癌寫到母親的專輯,最後交給一首自嘲的歌。這份自知,比任何重生敘事都可信。

第一張,為市場量身訂做,她自己說不適合她。第二張,她扛起幾乎所有樂器,說那張更像出道作。第三張,她讓外人進門動筆。最冒險的一步,是讓 Tim Davis 早上收曲、下午交詞;vocoder 和水上摩托車,都排在後面。

Blow 的記者寫,她已經從證明自己,走到理解自己。我說得更白一點:她終於肯讓人幫忙了。

媒體標題還停在病房:「抗癌成功重返樂壇」。發行兩週多,我找得到的中文報導,多半出自通稿。獨立樂評,一篇也沒找到。

標題還在病房。專輯已經去露營了。露營的朋友、藤椅、咖啡漬、一架玩具鋼琴、一首自嘲的歌,我希望它被這些東西記住。

https://open.spotify.com/album/78IWfjYobSvYfb2zQDXS91

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3-OpwyrbNk

上方影片為〈Every Second's A Treasure〉官方視覺影片(Official Visualizer)。


資料來源:Apple Music 專輯介紹與逐曲製作名單;Blow 吹音樂【吹專訪】(阿哼,2026-10-02)及 9/11、9/24 新聞稿;黑膠預購頁官方文案(FIGHT30);Atwood Magazine(2023-03-09);TaiwanPlus《Taiwan Calling》Ep5(2024);GigGuide 演出頁(2011–2014);第 30 屆金曲國際音樂節 showcase 介紹(2019);《The Next Big Thing 見證大團》節目簡介(2013);三立、TVBS、NOWnews、遠見轉載中央社、關鍵評論網、鏡週刊、Marie Claire 等報導(2015–2026);維基百科 Benjamin Lazar Davis、Kid A 條目。

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