Leehom Wang (May 17, 1976) is an American-born Chinese singer-songwriter and actor, mostly known for combining hip-hop and R&B with traditional Chinese music. Born in Rochester, New York, to Taiwanese immigrants, he showed great interest in music from a very young age and began taking violin lessons when he was just six years old. During his teenage years, he also learned how to play piano, guitar, and drums. After majoring in music and Asian studies at Williams College, Leehom Wang briefly joined the all-male a cappella group The Springstreeters. While visiting his grandparents in Taiwan in 1995, he landed a contract with BMG after participating in one of the label’s talent shows. His official studio debut, Love Rival, Beethoven, arrived in December of that year. The album received little to no attention from the press and Leehom Wang was dropped by the label shortly after. A year later, he signed with Decca Records and released the LP If You Hear My Song, followed by Missing You (1996) and White Paper (1997). Leehom Wang made his big breakthrough in 1998 when he delivered his groundbreaking fifth full-length Revolution, which sold over 10,000 copies in the first week of its release and won two Golden Melody Awards for Best Producer and Best Mandarin Male Singer. The dance pop-tinged Impossible to Miss You arrived in 1999 and became his best-selling effort, spawning the hits “Julia” and “Crying Palm.” In the following years, Leehom Wang crossed over into the Japanese market with the albums The Only One (2003) and Hear My Voice (2004), and incorporated elements from Chinese wind music and Beijing Opera on Shangri-La (2004) and Heroes of Earth (2005). Even though he went back to a more traditional pop rock sound on Change Me (2007) and Heart Beat (2008), his experiments were far from over—The 18 Martial Arts (2010) and Your Love (2015) both flirted with electronic music and the latter included a collaboration with Avicii on the single “Lose Myself.” After taking some time off from music to further advance his acting career, Leehom Wang returned in 2021 with the track “蓋世英雄(電影《Free Guy》中文主題曲,” which was included in the soundtrack of the science fiction comedy Free Guy.
