Singapore singer Mavis Hee, 49, headlined a much-anticipated concert in the Chinese city of Nanjing on April 20. But in videos which went viral on Chinese social media, calls of “refund” were heard at the show.
Her management team has addressed the controversy after several fans expressed their unhappiness and disappointment on Chinese social media. Some fans said they felt “cheated” after paying more than 600 yuan (S$113) for a ticket.
Hee rose to fame in the 1990s and faded from the music scene in the early 2000s. She saw a resurgence in her career in 2023, including performing at the Heavenly Queens’ Night concert in China’s Hainan province in August 2023.
According to the posts, her Nanjing gig was supposed to last 2½ hours. But she allegedly spent only half an hour singing five songs, while one hour was devoted to an audience engagement segment.
This led to cries of “refund” from the audience, with some of them claiming on social media that Hee’s classic songs – such as Moonlight In The City, Living By Night and Regret – were performed by the band instead of her.
The Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism said on April 21 that it had received several complaints and is looking into the matter, according to China’s Global Times newspaper.
The management team of Hee’s concert in Nanjing told Singapore’s Chinese-language Shin Min Daily News that Hee performed 11 songs, with the audience singing along on two of them.
They added that four more songs were then performed by guest singers at the concert (with Hee joining the guest singers on one), while audience sing-a-longs took place on three more songs.
“When the first guest was performing, some people began shouting ‘refund’ and ‘we want the original singer’,” the management team told Shin Min. “We did not expect this to happen and we quickly asked Mavis to return.”
They said they had underestimated the audience’s appetite for Hee’s singing.
They added that they wanted to give fans a chance to chat with the singer during the concert, but did not expect the fan interaction segment to be too lengthy for some who preferred her to sing rather than talk. They said they would make adjustments for future shows.
