MySpace a place for friends

There are few challenges Sun hasn’t tackled in the 7 years since she began her career in music. One of Singapore’s leading Mandarin Pop stars, she has sold more than 4 million albums, performed in front of hundreds of thousands of fans, worked with producers and songwriters as illustrious as Wyclef Jean and Diane Warren, become the first Asian artist to have a 1 hit on the Billboard’s Dance Chart and performed the Olympic anthem at a ceremony in the Forbidden City leading up to the opening of 2008’s Beijing Olympic Games.

In the midst of it all, the singer has found time to counsel troubled teens at home in Southeast Asia, help build six schools for impoverished children in China and gave more than 50% of her royalties and income for charities including aid for victims of last year’s horrific Sichuan earthquake and hydrocephalic children in Honduras. In her remaining spare time, the singer indulges her passion for fashion: She’s opened 3 boutiques in Singapore and helped bring an Ed Hardy flagship store to Singapore. Oh yeah, and she’s also raising a four year-old son. Calling her a master multitask-er is a massive understatement.

And yet, the singer says there’s no greater challenge, nor one more worth undertaking than her current push to bring her music to America. “I believe it’s a secret dream for every Asian singer to make it in America,” she says. “This is the place. But I don’t just want it to be an experience to add on to whatever achievement I’ve already got. It’s just my dream to be able to share whatever is in me. Coming here, I feel really liberated.

Born Ho Yeow Sun, Sun was a spontaneous performer from her childhood. “I’ve loved singing since I was young,” she says, citing Celine Dion and Whitney Houston as early influences. “I was always a performer at home for my family, especially my mom. I can remember her clapping to my hair-swinging, butt-shaking moments.” She wrote her first songs jamming with friends after college, where she’d begun a successful career in youth counseling in Singapore. She recalls how exciting it was to take on the persona of a song, and how gratifying it was on stage to feel the support of her friends in the audience: “I’m an emotional performer; when I’m singing, I really get into what the song is saying.”

In 2000, a friend of Sun’s invited a local label executive to one of her performances, and he was so impressed that he offered her a contract. “It was a shock,” she says. “I was happy doing what I was doing. But as he put it, counseling is one-to-one, where a song with a message reaches thousands or even millions. I realized that whenever I have to express myself, especially during the low times in my life, I sing a lot and I listen to a lot of music.” The singer, who has a master’s degree in counseling and started a community services association in 1996 to help troubled teens in Singapore, says music was always like a “safety blanket” for her. “I struggled with depression during my teenage years, and I listened to a lot of music,” she explains. “Not all of the music was really positive, but it still comforted me during those times. Music can help people express pain that they couldn’t find words to express. That’s what I love to do – connect with my fans and help them express whatever’s in their hearts.”

That connection with her fans has spanned five platinum-selling albums of primarily ballads in Mandarin, and five chart-topping English-language dance singles. Then, in 2007, Sun made another invaluable connection when she met writer, producer and Fugees co-founder Wyclef Jean. He was so impressed by the singer that he invited her to open his North American tour and featured her in the video for his song “Fast Car.” The pair also teamed up in the studio, recording tracks like the exotic bump-and-grind pop tune “China Wine.”

“In Asia, I’m known to sing the big melodramatic ballads,” she says. “But like anyone else, I’m not one-dimensional, and I also love uptempo, energetic songs. When I got to America, being surrounded by such creativity and musicality opened me up to exploring different sounds.” For her debut American album, Cause A Ruckus, Sun worked with a team of A-list producers including Rodney Jerkins (Beyonce, Brandy and Mary J. Blige), Danja (Justin Timberlake, Madonna and Nelly Furtado) and Rob Knox (Britney Spears and Ciara) to achieve a sound she describes as “dance music with a rock edge and a little bit of the Asia touch.”

Sun’s first single off of Cause A Ruckus is “Fancy Free” produced by Chuck Harmony (Neyo). Sun says about “Fancy Free,” “Fancy Free” is my life philosophy in a nutshell. I'm a strong advocate of loving yourself and your dreams... No matter what others say or feel. There is such a positive energy in the song and lyric that I connect with completely. The message I want to convey is simple: No one is perfect and great dreams are achieved by ordinary people who believe in their individual beauty and uniqueness!” The video for “Fancy Free,” was directed by award winning director Joseph Kahn (U2, Enimen, Britney Spears and Mariah Carey).

“You Stupid,” produced by Danja, gave Sun a chance to perform a tongue-in-cheek kiss-off ditty that reminds her of her favorite songs by Gwen Stefani. “This song is for every girl with lousy boyfriends!” she says, giggling. “It’s a song to tell those guys, ‘You’re stupid! You didn’t treasure me. You didn’t appreciate me.’” And the Rodney Jerkins-produced “Garage,” she says, “just makes me want to dance.”

The singer also gets tremendous gratification from a wide array of humanitarian projects, including opening schools and orphanages in China and India, and visiting the earthquake-stricken Sichuan last year. “My fans say, “Where do you get the time to do that?’ I love music and performing, but touching lives and holding these kids in my arms -- that’s real to me.” She tenderly recalls an encounter in Sichuan with a six year-old girl orphaned by the earthquake. “When she saw me, it was almost like she knew me. I don’t know why, but we just connected. There were people there who were artists, so they drew pictures of me and her, and I always look at them and wish I could do more for these children. I send money to her, but I know that she’s still not been adopted. It breaks your heart. I feel like there’s so much to do, seriously, and I feel helpless sometimes, but I have to remind myself that I believe in the power of one, that we all can do something.”

Regardless of the undertaking – from her charity work to her singing career to her entrepreneurial pursuits – Sun hopes one message shines through. “I want to be a role model,” she begins. “But I think differently from a lot of people. I feel like being a role model doesn’t mean that I have to be perfect. Nobody can be perfect, and I don’t want to just sing songs that are positive. I want to sing songs about love and empowerment, but I also want to sing about pain, I want to sing about life, I want to sing about reality. Coming to America has really opened me up and liberated me. I love the slogans you guys have: ‘If you can dream it, you can do it.’ Moving here is the biggest step I’ve ever taken. I have friends that are like, ‘Are you sure you’re going to do this? You’ve accomplished so much,’ and it’s not easy to start over again and do something so different. But life is so short that I don’t want to live with ‘what if?’ It’s my dream, and I just want to give it a try.”