The Imitation of Woman's Heart 1: Data

English and Chinese editions; audio and video at Sarah Chen Memory Gate. The album that significantly altered Sarah Chen’s career is the 1988 Woman’s Heart, her first collaboration with Jonathan Lee. Promoted as Lee’s new experiment, the album is often said to have launched a new “urban woman” phase of Chen’s career1. But was Woman’s Heart a Mandopop innovation? Or was it an imitation album? Here, using a data-driven approach, we analyzed the conceptual similarity between Woman’s Heart and Chen’s 1987 English album Miracle of Love. We showed that the six Lee-written songs on Woman’s Heart were highly similar to those on Miracle of Love. The finding challenges the album's originality. Rather than a new concept album, Woman's Heart is likely a Mandopop adaptation of Chen's English work. 【女人心效颦 1. 数据】陈淑桦的职业叙事在1988年发生了转变。她和李宗盛首度合作的《女人心》在宣传上走了「制作人至上」的路线,专辑被定位为李宗盛的新尝试,他以一个全新的概念开启了陈淑桦“都市女子”的阶段1。但《女人心》真的是华语乐坛的创新吗?它会不会是一部效仿专辑?本期以数据驱动的方法,分析《女人心》和陈淑桦1987年英文专辑《爱的奇迹》(Miracle of Love)的概念相似性。 分析发现,李宗盛填词的六首歌与《爱的奇迹》在统计上有极为显著的相似性,高于陈淑桦另外43首百代歌曲中任意六首歌的六百万种组合。这个发现对《女人心》的创新性提出疑问。虽然官方宣传说《女人心》是新概念专辑,但它更可能是陈淑桦英文作品的华语效仿集。