The truth and fiction of a crimson heart

“If my first album was like a film of my life, then this second one is like a cinema—or a mysterious space-time portal to parallel-universe versions of my life,” Jingfei Chen tells Apple Music. Four years after her self-titled debut, the singer-songwriter stages the drama of her second LP, 猩红 [<i>Crimson</i>], using the colour of pain, excitement and desire. With eclectic arrangements and evocative vocals, the album surfaces hidden emotions, from ambition and romantic yearning to self-doubt and stubbornness.

Often categorised as a retro artist due to her penchant for creating atmospheres that recall vintage cinema and theatre, Chen doesn’t object to that label, although nostalgia isn’t her driving force. “Speaking as a creator, I love it when something’s a classic but not outdated,” she says. “I integrate my themes, arrangements, styles and lyrics with today’s situations.” Her songs remain a treasure trove of references to art and literature, some transparent—the disco-esque “Seize the Night, My Girl”, inspired by a Tomihiko Morimi novel, or the haunting piano anthem “After Many A Summer Dies the Swan”, after Aldous Huxley's Hollywood existentialist exploration —while others require deeper dives.

The album’s subtitle, “The Truth & Fiction of A Crimson Heart”, suggests that these autobiographically inspired narratives aren’t necessarily intended to be a factual document of the artist’s life. “From the moment the writing starts, a song no longer belongs to its creator but is a joint creation with those who see and hear it,” Chen says. “It’s true that being misunderstood is the fate of any communicator, so I can totally accept that every individual will have their own version, their own understanding.”
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Below, Chen shares with Apple Music stories about the creation of the album and selected tracks.

<b>How did you arrive at the album’s colourful theme?</b>
“At first, ‘crimson’ didn’t seem capable of encompassing all of the spiritual exploration and all of the parallel universes I wanted to show. But eventually I found that the colour really suits the hidden thread that runs through the album. First of all, it nicely matches the style of the lyrics and arrangement. There’s a musical and emotional density to every song, as if each is a different crimson exclamation point. Secondly, the sense I get from the word ‘crimson’ is exactly what I want for my style: three-dimensional, synaesthetic, cinematic and contrastive. ‘Crimson’ is an expression of the album’s tone—a touch of desire, a touch of darkness, a touch of the call of hunger. I’m sort of like the colour crimson—I love a wine-dark red. It represents my aesthetic, my attitude. It’s an extension of my first album’s logo, which represents danger and desire.

“Fourthly, red is hidden in every song on the album, from the red hair in ‘The Sunset Playhouse’ and red lips in ‘Seize the Night, My Girl’ to the nostalgic feeling about a red scarf in ‘Homecoming’. The ‘Lonely Bloom in Desert’ is red in colour, there’s crimson blood in ‘After Many A Summer Dies the Swan’ and there’s three red exclamation points in ‘The Show Must Go On’ [Chinese title ‘演!演!演!’]. Also, ‘Eros of Polaroid’ has a bit of the feel of Eileen Chang’s novella <i>Red Rose, White Rose</i>.”

<b>How true to life are the album’s many self-portraits?</b>
“I’ve always been interested in acting and stage personas. In life, everyone’s playing a role they can’t set down—even when you’re alone, you’re performing the self that exists in your subconscious. Which one is the real me? What does it mean to find myself, to be myself? It’s a false dilemma most of the time, since each person’s process of finding and understanding themselves is different. I’ve always maintained that we don’t live our lives for an end goal. Sure, where my work is concerned, I’m a creator, so I’ve got to push myself to ever-greater heights. But more often in our lives, we’re living in order to experience who we are, to find out answers to inner peace and personal happiness.

“For the past two or three years, I’ve felt that limitations were breaking down around many of my personality defaults—the things that operate under inertia. Lots of things aren’t as weighty as we imagine at first. We can experience life with a more relaxed and playful mindset. Life should be richer and more colourful, more deserving of celebration, and should allow us more agency to make choices rather than be full of restrictions, stress and passivity.”

Chen recommends three of her favourite album tracks below.

<b>“Eros of Polaroid”</b>
“The inspiration for this one came from Japanese artist Nobuyoshi Araki’s photographs—not any specific shot, just that feeling of intense desire in his work that I’ve always appreciated and am pretty good at depicting. I add in lots of emotional stories. The result doesn’t come from any particular source but is a feeling, a mix of flavours. What I want is a flavour that is totally Jingfei Chen.”

<b>“The Show Must Go On”</b>
“Before I picked this song’s Chinese title, ‘演!演!演!’ [literally ‘Perform! Perform! Perform!’], I knew what it would be called in English, because of three celebrity clips I watched in the space of a few days. The actor Huang Bo was a guest on <i>U Can U BB</i>, and one of the things he said was: ‘The world is other people, but ultimately the world is yours.’ That became a key line in this song. Then on <i>Thirteen Talks</i>, when host Xu Zhiyuan was talking to historian Cho-yun Hsu, he said: ‘Faced with an uncertain world, we must go inwards and settle ourselves.’ I thought that might make for a good song. And when South Korean actor Han Ye-seul posted a video where she interviewed an elderly fashion vlogger who always wore gorgeous clothing to shoot her videos, she asked the vlogger: ‘Why do you put so much effort into it?’ And the woman responded: ‘The show must go on.’ And that’s my attitude: No matter how bleak or undesirable things may seem, we still exist in this world, so we might as well continue inwards, explore ourselves and let the show go on.”

<b>“The Narcissism Spell”</b>
“This song originated as a response to my first album, where the song ‘我的孤独认出你的孤独’ [‘My Loneliness Meets Yours’] has the line: ‘At the best age, it turns out you’ve lost the ability to love.’ This song answers with: ‘I’ll keep me for myself and love myself alone.’ The feeling is lonely and pessimistic—and that deep-down loneliness is hard to communicate. I’ve always tended to be rational, with an INTJ [introverted, intuitive, thinking and judging] personality, but in recent years I’ve become a pure FP [the feeling and perceiving personality type]. It’s an internal contradiction, but both coexist within me. I think you’ve got to find a balance point for yourself. ‘The Narcissism Spell’ is an interesting take on that. It doesn’t mean blind arrogance or egocentrism, but more a feeling of finding a place where you can be balanced.”