Last Updated on July 10, 2025 by stlplace
When I was in college in Wuhan (1989 to 1993), some of the most popular songs were in Cantonese, and were sung by Hong Kong based singers. This was because at the time, the mainland just opened up, and culture wise it was way behind both Hong Kong and Taiwan, thus the Mandarin pop were mostly from Taiwan, and the Cantonese pop were mostly from Hong Kong. They in turn “borrowed” some popular song or music from Japan, which is even more advanced.
Fast forward 30 years, it seems to me the Cantonese pop declined a bit because the old generation singers in HK, who are mostly in their 60s, have mostly retired. One thing I noticed recently, there are some new singers and song writers that are based both in mainland or in HK, and they are continuing this important tradition of writing Cantonese songs.
I listed some of them below. Will update as I came across them more. Note the link in Douyin.com is not easily accessible outside of China. I will try to find some other sources in that case.
*FireLand火土 (ins; YT; my YT Playlist here)
He (or she) is the author of 【粵語】想見你想見你想見你｜火土填詞 x AYAN何璟昕｜想見你劇集主題曲
From Instagram it seems he is from HK.
*陳鈺海 (Douyin page, 抖音）
*Mr. Chen doesn’t have a social media account or something like that, at least I found it yet. He maybe the most prolific 粤语填词人。I consider him to be the best among the young folks too.
He is the author of 《時間不等你》. This seems to be one of Ayen Ho a.k.a. 何璟昕‘s grownup song, if I may.
I also think 放手以后 Letting Go is a bit similar. I talked about 放手以后 right below this. More on Mr Chen: quote Carlos (who is 陈钰海’s teacher) ‘s instagram
…… 第二站到了荔枝乡茂名，数年前在网上开始教学生填词，三年间陈钰海名字已经在国内填词界名无人不识，有80多首原创作品上市(果然青出于蓝)，…… (roughly translated into English: my student Chen Yu hai has made tremendous progress being a Cantonese lyrics writer in last 3 years)
Btw, this is the short clip for 放手以后 on Douyin, and it’s available on the WeChat too.
Other songs
Also, 粵語填詞，《不讓我的眼淚陪我過夜》，學生陳鈺海讓齊秦金曲粵語重現
希望你被这个世界爱着 国粤双语版 粤语词@陈钰海～菜鸟填词 (Blibili). 何璟昕的微信公众号(Ayen何璟昕)上也有这个短视频。YT Shorts by Ayen 希望你被这个世界爱着 国粤双语版.
One thing a bit unfortunate is Mr. Chen doesn’t have a YT Channel. Note for me personally it’s much easier to get to YT as I am in the USA, and it’s harder to get to Douyin etc. Also, I noticed quite a few people mostly posted on Douyin. I can understand to some extent, thinking it’s likely their main audience is based in mainland China.
Also noticed the composer for the song 時間不等你》is 石羽函 (baidu; apple music), and Mr. Shi is quite talented musician, singer and song writer.
*Carlos 卡洛斯 (FB, Instagram, YouTube)
(YT) 放手以后 by 卡洛斯偕同填词学生陈钰海，及网红何璟昕于内地发表的第一首原创作品，在内地各大平台同时发佈，香港暂时未有得听 (Carlos’ Instagram). Note Carlos is also the composer for the song. Also note the song is available on YT now.
*心之洛 (google search here; my YT Playlist here)
@lokslyrics on YouTube and Bilibili (note he has much more stuff on Bilibili)
He (or she) wrote the 【哪吒2】片尾曲《在故事的最終》粵語版｜港風填詞翻唱｜唱哭每個成長的孩子 Acoustic cover｜Ayen何璟昕 || Noticed the word “故鄉阡陌” and it reminds me of my childhood hometown and the village, the village school, and the 阡陌 I walked from my home to the village school, and so on. The word 阡陌 /qiānmò/ is no longer commonly used in modern Chinese (mandarin) anymore.
阡和陌分别指田间南北方向和东西方向的小路。泛指田间纵横交错的小路。
「躬耕农田，出入 阡陌」
Here is another beautiful song written by him (it appears 心之洛 is a gentleman – from his YT Channel – I saw 他/他的) 【粤语版】若把你（cover Kirsty刘瑾睿）温柔粤语版【AyenX心之洛】Acoustic cover 吉他弹唱 and sung by one and only Ayen 何璟昕 🙂
《爱如火》温柔粤语版cover｜Ayen何璟昕 X 心之洛｜粤语歌吉他弹唱
Also, update 05-08-2025, I just created a playlist for his songs on YT.
*Jericho Liang Bilibili Douyin
He (or she) wrote Cantonese lyrics for 粤语版【世界赠予我的】王菲｜Ayen何璟昕, plus a few other songs Ayen sung (I will add more as I saw them).
*Ayen Ho 何璟昕 (links to Wikipedia)
You may notice that I already wrote a blog post about her. One thing keep in mind is she is multi-talented, and she can do song writing (both compose and lyrics), as well as sing and producing videos. She manages all her social media and music platform on her own: as explained here 一個人就是一個團隊？/揭秘：我平時是如何一個人製作視頻的！
Last but not least, I noticed she does write for intro of a song on YT (e.g., again using 時間不等你【粵語新歌】as an example and graphic design too. Here is what (I assume) 陳鈺海 and Ayen 何璟昕 wrote (YT video here). Beautiful, isn’t it? I googled “芻狗” because I don’t know the word 🙂
時間不仁，以萬物為芻狗……
在這個喧囂的世界里，時間如同流水般匆匆流逝，轉眼間，我們已經來到了一個又一個的時刻。曾經總以為時間很多很多，後來才明白，時間無情地帶走著我們的一切，無論是青春的容顏，還是歲月的滄桑。因此，我們應該學會珍惜時間，珍惜愛，因為時間不會等待任何人。
時間 不會在等你
不會在倒退
有天醒覺 掛念著誰
曾經總以為時間很多很多，後來才明白，時間無時無刻都在帶走你的一切……所以，請珍惜時間，珍惜愛。
如還幸有愛 請你及時
別要 等一天追悔
......She wrote quite a few songs, most of them are from young girls’ perspective: I would say girls between 16 and middle 20s of age. Her song is uplifting for the most part, but added a bit sad elements (looking back), and sometimes I felt they are curing, probably both due to her folksy music 民谣 and her unique voice, as well as Cantonese dialect. I am going to give some examples below:
Uplifting: 原創粵語歌曲 何璟昕 Ayen【如果今天天气正好 Nice day, Blossom age, without you】 Official HD MV
Curing: 何璟昕 Ayen《月光 Moonlight 》官方高畫質 Official HD MV || 摘抄一段歌词，when did I last hear the word 徜徉 in real world? I don’t remember.
月光 愈光 鋪在海上
摻雜回憶 並肩徜徉
再沒有哪天 似這個晚上
你共我 看月色 純真的漂亮
悠闲自在地行走。 「徜徉于山水之间」
Beautiful, isn’t it?
More on the Beauty of Cantonese language 粤语之美 古汉语之美
您真的聽懂《Shall We Talk》嗎？解讀林夕愛的哲學，聽歌學閱讀理解，現場鋼琴彈奏，20200302（中文字幕）(YT)
Quote a bit of the lyrics of Shall We Talk below.
明月光為何又照地堂?
寧願在公園躲藏 不想喝湯
任由目光留在漫畫一角
為何望母親一眼就如罰留堂?
As explained in the video above, this has a lot of culture stuff behind it. Keep in mind the lyricist: 林夕 is one of the best Cantonese lyricists in HK and in the world. Also Eason 陳奕迅 – Shall we talk 女生版 Acoustic cover (YT video).
And 最後的茱麗葉-容祖兒 愛後餘生-謝霆鋒 小日子-容祖兒 ShallWeTalk-陳奕迅 英皇金曲 medley cover by 許靖韻 Angela Hui feat 洪卓立 Ken Hung (about 10 mins mark): I personally like this video quite a bit as the lady (girl) next to許靖韻 Angela Hui tried to comfort her when Angela was getting emotional towards the end of this song. And the gentleman next to Angela 洪卓立 Ken Hung finished the song for Angela too. Such a caring and sweet team.
Another example: 遙遠的她. And just quote one sentence below:
遙遠的她 彷彿借風聲跟我話
And the YT video is here – 張學友 – 遙遠的她 女生版 Acoustic guitar cover. The lyrics of the song was written by famous author 香港粤语填词人潘源良。Quote Wikipedia:
潘源良（英语：Calvin Poon Yuen Leung，1958年11月8日—），香港填词人、电影编剧及导演、足球评述员、书法家，有“浪子词人”之称
Reference:
Cantopop at Wikipedia
I don’t see an “粤语填词” in Wikipedia. In fact I don’t know how to translate it into English either. Thinking about how I do that, as well as potentially creating such as an entry on Wikipedia. (Update) I saw 歌迷问：为什么说用粤语填词，比普通话填词难太多? at Zhihu.com. Also I did see 填词 at Wikipedia.
PS:
Not directly related to this, the other day I talked to my 15-year-old about the English song I listened when I was in college in Wuhan, and how much I paid for Whitney Houston tape then about CNY 15 Yuan. And I told her it’s similar to the cost of nice meal nowadays. Then I was a jobless college kid, 15 Yuan was something. I recall my dad used to give me about 100 Yuan a month in the school year 1992 to 1993, for a month worth of food etc.
I also recall, when I was listening to all those beautiful Cantonese songs, for that matter the mandarin pop songs written by Jonathan Lee (李钟盛), suddenly I realized that in a way, if we use the software engineers as analogy, the singer is a front end engineer, and the composer, lyrics writer and so on are back end engineer. We know in software world it’s hard to find true full stack engineers, but in the music world, Ayen is one because she pretty much does everything herself.
PS 2 (05-24-2025) I came across this wikipedia page on Cantopop, and I contributed a little as I saw fit. I am not fully convinced that “进入21世纪，粤语歌曲影响力渐减…” though.