Albert Leung, better known by the pen name Lin Xi, was born in Hong Kong on 7 December 1961 under the real name Leung Wai-man, with ancestral roots in Dongguan, Guangdong. He attended Shek Lei Catholic Primary School, Kowloon Tong Alliance Primary School, Chan Sui Ki (La Salle) College and La Salle College, and graduated from the arts faculty of the University of Hong Kong in 1984, majoring in translation. In 1984 he won an RTHK non-love-song lyrics competition with Once, sung by Kenny Bee, the first of his lyrics to be published; in 1986 he wrote Smoking Woman for the band Raidas, making his name with a hazy, image-rich style. His pen name is drawn from the veteran lyricist Richard Lam, with the second character taken from the Chinese word for dream. He went on to write for Leslie Cheung, Faye Wong, Jacky Cheung, Miriam Yeung, Eason Chan and Anthony Wong, producing more than four thousand songs, among them The Promise, At Least I Have You, Under Mount Fuji and A Letter to Myself, as well as Leslie Cheung's Chase and Left and Right Hand, Faye Wong's Deep and Face, and Miriam Yeung's A Maiden's Prayer. On Commercial Radio's Ultimate Song Chart Awards he won the lyricist award for nine consecutive years from 1995, the longest such run, and took it four more times between 2006 and 2009. In 1999 he won Best Lyricist at Taiwan's Golden Melody Awards for Faye Wong's Face, and in 2010 for A-Mit's Open the Door, See the Mountain. For the 2008 Beijing Olympics he wrote seven promotional songs, the best known being Beijing Welcomes You. He received the Golden Needle Award at the Top 10 Gold Songs Awards in 2009 and the CASH Music Achievement Award in 2012. Known with Wyman Wong as the two Wymans of the lyric trade, he has pushed Cantopop beyond simple love songs into the writing of urban psychology, and his phrasing has become a shared language of the genre. He has also published essay collections and in recent years has moved to Taiwan, still writing for singers such as Eason Chan; from 2017 his work was progressively removed from mainland platforms.
Lin Xi's lyrics pushed Cantopop beyond simple love songs into the writing of urban psychology; his imagery and phrasing became a shared language of the genre, shaping the images of singers such as Faye Wong, Leslie Cheung and Miriam Yeung and influencing several generations of lyricists, alongside his peer Wyman Wong.
Achievements
- 1984 · Won an RTHK non-love-song lyrics competition with Once
- 1999 · Won Best Lyricist at Taiwan's Golden Melody Awards for Faye Wong's Face
- 2009 · Received the Golden Needle Award at the RTHK Top 10 Gold Songs Awards