Asian American singer Coco Lee stretches out on top of a Limousine in waiting for the Oscars ceremony In Los Angeles.
The heels and red cheongsam were designed by Versace, the $1.3 million diamonds were Harry Winston loaners, but down deepthe underwear, incidentally, was everyday Victoria's SecretCoCo Lee is a plain-talking, down-to-earth, family-loving pop star whose career has skyrocketed in a remarkably short time. A Hong Kong-California hybrid, CoCo got her big break in Taiwan with a karaoke hit in 1994, which she quickly parlayed into mass fame on the Chinese mainland. Disney hired her to do the Chinese voice-over for the movie Mulan (Celine Dion's big break, remember, was voicing Beauty and the Beast). Later one of her songs was chosen for the soundtrack to The Runaway Bride, the Julia Roberts-Richard Gere romance flick. CoCo's current goal is nothing less than to demolish the pop-music divide between East and West, and a big step was surely keeping her underwear unexposed at the Oscars in front of a billion television viewers. The Crouching Tiger theme song may not have had the world rocking off its axis, but there's no better exposure imaginable. "I could sing for 30 years," she says, "and never get the chance to perform like this."
There are two reasons CoCo might actually succeed in making it on both sides of the Pacifica feat that hasn't been accomplished since The Sukiyaki Song in 1963. First, she's great looking: those almond-eyes and alluring lips, memorable curves, that skin. The second factor is a quaint one: in the epoch of manager-produced boy bands and teen stars, CoCo Lee can actually sing. Bill Conti, Rocky composer and the conductor of this year's Academy Award orchestra, says he sensed her star quality at the first rehearsal. "Her presence reminds me of Celine when she first sang at the Oscars. No one really knew who she was, but when she started to sing, people noticed."
CoCo's origins are charmingly mundane. In Hong Kong, CoCo lived with her mother and sisters Nancy and Carol until she was eight. (Her father died before CoCo was delivered.) Then Mama Lee decided her daughters needed English and moved them to San Francisco. After graduating from a California public high school, CoCo returned to Asia. Though she lacked formal training in Chinese-language singing (she speaks Cantonese at home), she won second place in Hong Kong's annual New Talent Singing Contest. A minor Taiwan label gave her a recording contract and, after a fast course in Mandarin (the lingua franca of the recording industry in Taiwan, China and smaller markets in Singapore and Malaysia), she recorded a song that became a hit in Taiwan's karaoke bars. Within six months she had churned out two albums. "It was so hard on me. I got sick, didn't sleep and worked too much," she recalls. The following year, her label released seven more CoCo Lee CDs, largely compilations and retreads. And why not? She was hot. One was an album of covers in English, which she speaks fluently, though with an infusion of black urban slang. "I started learning in elementary school in Hong Kong," she explains, "and then my first friend in America, a half-Asian, half-African-American girla very cool girltaught me a lot."
The CoCo bottom line to date: 16 CDs, 8 million copies sold, and two MTV International awards: 1999 Best Female Artist and Best Chinese Music video in 1998 for Di Da Di, her biggest hit to date. House of fashion Chanel named Coco its first "Asian-Pacific Celebrity Ambassadress" because, as the company's regional director of image and external relations Bonnie Gokson says: "She's just perfect. And she wears our clothes very well." (The fact that her name is also a Chanel trademark doesn't hurt either.) The designation means lots of clothes, makeup and guest appearances throughout Asia and Europe. But when she returns home to Los Angeles, CoCo Lee still stays at home with her mother and sister. (Eldest sister Carol studies in Hong Kong.)
When she performs, Coco is all business. At a banquet room recently in Hong Kong's Grand Hyatt hotel, CoCo is doing a soundcheck before a Chanel pret-a-porter show. Earphones on, she belts out A Love Before Time. She is into it, but the others in the room sense something isn't right: CoCo sounds like a weak lounge singer at a crowded bar. Her performance smile fades as sister Nancy gives her the bad news. Throwing her shoulders back, the singer barks commands to the soundman, masking her anger with a shiny smile. With precision, Nancy and CoCo go over what needs to be done. Soon the technical problems are solved and CoCo's lush voice resounds as it should.
CoCo Lee Inc. is strictly a family business. Nancy is CoCo's wardrobe consultant, p.r. representative, part-manager and makeup artist (even on Oscar night). Without Nancy, in fact, CoCo wouldn't even have her name. The English moniker she used through childhood was Ferren, and her Chinese name is Mayling, but neither would do, says Nancy. "Her real name's just too serious," she explains, "and her Chinese name is really common."
Mrs. Leetiny, busy, with a predilection for berets and aviator-style glassesis the archetypal stage mother, Hong Kong-style. She is manager, contract-signer and accountant. She is clearly pleased with CoCo's success, though she says she would also be happy if her daughter was in medical school. Mom is uncompromising about manners and decorum, both personal and professional. CoCo says she wasn't allowed to talk to boys until she was 18. But her decorum has won her fans in every corner of Asia. At a concert in the Chinese city of Wuhan, 55,000 people showed up in a cold rainstorm. CoCo chose to perform on the very edge of the stage, outside the protective tent. "Her makeup and hair were a mess," Nancy recalls, "But it was the most memorable concert ever."
Work these days involves a couple of very different projects. In mid-year, she plans to release a CD in Mandarin for her core fans and is determined to make it a great album. "I'm writing some of the material myself," she says. "I've been offered so many songs, but we're only going to record three of this batch because I gotta be pickier. Gotta be strict with this album." She wags her finger self-admonishingly, still disappointed with the quality of some of the assembly-line recordings she made in the past.
But CoCo's bigger ambition is to succeed at last in English. Her first internationally released CD came out last year, but it flopped in the U.S. Regardless, industry types believe CoCo has a fighting chance. "She has matured incredibly in the five years I've known her," says Alan Yavasis, vice president of marketing in Asia for Sony, her label since 1995. "She's more focused on what she wants and what she wants to accomplish." One project will combine rhythm and blues with Chinese-influenced vocals and instruments. "At first people said, 'You're a dreamer, there's no way you could become an international singer,'" CoCo says. "Or, 'There's no way you could release an English album.' Or, 'There's no way you could sing R. and B. and soul.' I've proven them all wrong. I want to tell my fans: as long as you believe and work hard, you will achieve anything." If, that is, you have curves, a voiceand a mother who still wants you to go to medical school.