Karen Mok's "Beyond Borders": The Song I've Had on Repeat

Lately I've had one song on repeat: Karen Mok's "Beyond Borders."

Does everyone think their taste in music is the best in the world? I think I do too, but the music I listen to is hard to sum up in one word.

For one thing, I listen to songs in a lot of languages, though most of them are in Chinese. For the past few years, JJ Lin has been my top artist of the year every year. But I don't remember making a point of listening to him. The ones I remember liking are "Backlit White" and "New Earth." When I looked into it, I found I'd saved dozens of his songs without realizing it, so over a year his songs end up getting played the most.

Besides Chinese, I listen most to Japanese, Korean, and English songs, and dabble a bit in French, Russian, and German. But listening to songs in other languages is different from listening to Chinese songs. I don't know what the lyrics mean, so all I can focus on is melody, rhythm, and feeling.

That also shows that the reason I mostly listen to Chinese songs is that, beyond melody, rhythm, and feeling, I care most about how the lyrics are written.

I'm in the habit of opening the app while I listen and following the lyrics line by line. I think good lyrics are the skeleton of a song. Without a good skeleton, even the best melody can't pour a beautiful soul into it.

Take JJ Lin, my top artist of the year. Most of his songs carry very strong emotion. "Backlit White," my favorite, has a natural vitality to it, and "New Earth" is a song that really tells a story.

A song only has its own unique feeling when the lyrics and melody blend seamlessly.

Suppose you asked me whose lyrics I like best, judging by lyrics alone.

If you wanted the name of a lyricist, I might say Vincent Fang or Tang Tian. But I usually don't listen to a song because of who wrote the words. With a lot of lyricists, I only noticed and remembered their names after hearing several of their songs.

(A few lines from "Blue and White Porcelain," lyrics by Vincent Fang)

(A few lines from "As You Wish," lyrics by Tang Tian)

Tang Tian, for example. I first learned her name because of Faye Wong's "As You Wish." How did I feel the first time I heard it? It was so good I couldn't stop myself. I had to know right away who wrote the lyrics. When I clicked through to her page, I found out Tang Tian had written so many hugely popular songs, like "Lonely Warrior" and "Both Mother and Daughter."

When it comes to singing, though, every singer has their own style. Karen Mok is a singer with a really distinctive one. I've long loved her songs like "Slowly Like You," "So Many People in This World," and "Suddenly."

What I love most about her songs is that she almost never uses a crying voice to express sadness. In her songs, calm is a common way of expressing things. Happy or sad, listening to her is like having someone talk with you slowly and calmly about all kinds of things.

"Beyond Borders" showed up in my Daily Recommendations a while back. I always listen to my Daily Recommendations. The odds of finding something I really love are low, but I've still found plenty of songs I adore that way.

I'd never heard of the lyricist, but I really love the lyrics to this song.

Here are two passages I copied down.

(A few lines from "Beyond Borders")

(More lines from "Beyond Borders")

Listening to the song as a whole, it feels wonderfully free and easy. And to me, the lyrics seem to be about courage.

The word "courage" usually means facing things: facing yourself, your past, the things that hurt, your dreams, the frustrations of reality.

I'm someone who holds on to the past, so this song really got to me.

Take a girl I used to like. After all these years, if you asked whether I've completely forgotten her, the answer is definitely no. I'm not someone who lacks reason. It's just that some things are hard to analyze rationally. When reason tries to suppress the parts of the past we don't want to forget, they turn into an obsession in your heart. You think you've let go, that you've forgotten, but really you just don't have the courage to face it. You hide it deep inside and pretend you don't remember.

I think things like this happen all the time. Everyone has a couple of things they don't want to forget and don't dare to face. It's a deeply contradictory state.

This song has a really positive strength in it, as if it's telling you: be true to what you feel. What's past is past, and there's nothing you can't face.

The past is long gone. Rather than saying we can't face it, it's more that what we have to face was never the past itself. It's the version of us that keeps dwelling on it after it's over.

I think I'm exactly that kind of person. I think a contradiction like this is a whirlpool. It drags you into a strange force field and drains your vitality.

Letting go of the past and bravely facing yourself and the future may be where getting that vitality back begins.

So hearing a song like this, right when I'm actively facing these contradictions myself, really moved me.

And it's jumped straight to the top as my favorite Karen Mok song.

That's the magic of music. It never picks its listeners. Everyone can hear their own story in a song.