‘The story of Hong Kong is the sound of it’: the cross-cultural joy of the city’s Cantopop music

Emma-Lee Moss, AKA singer-songwriter Emmy the Great, has written a memoir rooted in her love of Hong Kong’s east-meets-west pop. She picks her favourite tracks Emma-Lee Moss, a singer-songwriter who released four albums as Emmy the Great, was born in Hong Kong to an English father and Hongkonger mother. She lived there until she was 11, when her family moved to England, one of many who left Hong Kong before its transfer of sovereignty from the UK to China in 1997. Even as a child, Moss understood the significance of the handover, which returned Hong Kong to Chinese control after 156 years as a British colony. “Thanks to our British passports, we would avoid the greatest schism our city had ever known – and its consequences, which were unwritten,” Moss writes in her memoir, My Cantopop Nights. Later, as a touring musician, Moss played gigs in Hong Kong, where she reconnected with her childhood love of Cantopop – predominantly Hong Kong music that blended Chinese and western pop sensibilities. In 2017, she moved back there to write her fourth album. Then, in 2019, she watched as thousands of pro-democracy protesters took to the streets after activists, including Joshua Wong

Jun 3, 2026 → Jun 16, 2026