Moving to 1960s, Cantopop start to emerge and popularize in society, but it was not powerful enough to reverse the domination of foreign songs and mandarin songs in the society. There are 3 main reason:

 

First, record label company failed to recognise the potential of Cantopop. In 1959, Commercial Radio Hong Kong (CRHK) started radio operation. The establishment of CRHK intensify the competition between different broadcasting companies. And with the incite from the director 周聰, CRHK started to use Cantopop as the theme song of radio dramas, for example 《勁草嬌花》,《情如夢》,《痴情淚》,《曲終殘夜》,《飛花曲》etc. These song resulted in high popularity, but record label companies failed to recognise potential profit brought by the wave and they choose to continue produce ditty sung in aria of Cantonese opera. So Cantopop lost its opportunity for further development.

 

Second, with the rise of education and adapt English as teaching medium, teenage received strong influence from the west. They start to appreciate western popular music, like Beatles. Refer to the statistic of population census in 1961, Hong Kong’s population began to dominant by teenagers rather than middle age people in the 30s, which link with the rise of subcultures, i.e. English songs and Cantopop. Although English songs were still popularise, it provided a foundation for further development of Cantopop in the next decade as Hong Kong was transforming to a more open-minded society,

 

Most importantly, Cantopop relies heavily on the fame of Hong Kong films, which hinder the production quality of Cantopop. During 1960s, this was the golden period for the Hong Kong local Cantonese movies, Hong Kong movies were popular among Southeast Asia region. Because of the successful of HK films, interlude music like, 《女殺手》,《玉女痴情》,《姑娘十八一朵花》by 陳寶珠, become popular. Singers of these songs are originally actors in the film, as the song get popular, they are able to issue their own music album. Different record label company, like 百代、天星、娛樂, burn original soundtrack in local film to an album for sale, which greatly boost their sale revenue.

 

With the help of Hong Kong film, Cantopop enters an embryonic stage. Style of Cantopop start to develop and improve gradually. But as Cantopop were just an adjunct and byproduct of films, budget and time for production was not enough and the quality of lyrics or composition was rough, Cantopop was unable to build up its own reputation and fight with other music genre spread across the society.

 

 

Popular singers in 70s