1997 was going incredibly well for Tom Chang: he had produced protégé a-mei’s blockbuster album Bad Boy, earning him acclaim as a platinum-selling producer and talent scout. He also wrote and produced 口是心非 (Duplicity), an album that picked up where 卡拉OK.台北.我 (Karaoke Live. Taipei. Me) and 带我去月球 (Take Me to the Moon) left off and challenged the boundaries of Mandopop and its listeners. Weaving literary references and genre fluidity into arrangements that toed the edges of tonality, he had created a masterpiece for the ages. Tragically, it would be his last. Later that year, his promising future was cut short in a car accident at the age of 31. The album’s 11 tracks bridge mass appeal with daring choices in an already risk-averse genre. Explosive opener “如果你想离开我” (“If You Want to Leave Me”) channels Queen with choruses of phased vocals, while the title track is a cavernous minor-key ballad that works itself up into a rock rapture. The Latin rhythms he had explored with a-mei surface here on “Cappuccino”, which slips in and out of 7/4 time, in the bossa nova pulse of “神采” (“The Look”) and the through-composed block party of “在黄昏融化了世界的色彩以前” (“Before Dusk Melts the World’s Colours”). Though less outspoken on social issues than on past releases, Chang’s ballads steer clear of standard Mandopop melodrama and veer for the avant-garde. Impressionist strings and backing vocals on “河” (“River”) ride squelching guitars to a cacophonous climax and the mini opera of “爱情...” (“Love...”) and “...的图案” (“...Pattern”) tip the hat to Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” amid harp and string runs, while “随你” (“With You”) marries harpsichords with vocoders. He supplements lyrics in the album notes with excerpts from Shakespeare, Zhuangzi and Chinese writer Shen Congwen—and “玫瑰的名字” (“The Name of the Rose”) name-checks Italian author Umberto Eco’s novel in a tempest of strings that quotes Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. The year after its release, 口是心非 took Album of the Year at the 9th Golden Melody Awards, Chang’s first win after five nominations for solo work throughout his career. It would not be his last posthumous GMA—he was honoured with a Special Contribution Award in 2017 for his enduring imprint on Chinese-language pop that echoes in the work of independent-minded artists such as Qing Feng Wu, Hua Chenyu and Chen Li. In the album’s liner notes, Chang revealed the title Duplicity is itself is a ruse: “Strictly speaking, the first thing I considered when making this record was ‘transcendence’, and the second was ‘sincerity’.” He achieved both—and continues to as his music lives on.