No. 13 – A Dancing Van Gogh (Chinese: No. 13作品－跳舞的梵谷) is the thirteenth studio album by Singaporean singer Stefanie Sun (Chinese: 孙燕姿), released on 9 November 2017 by Universal Music Taiwan.[1]
Background and development
After the release of Kepler in 2014, Stefanie Sun held 28 Kepler World Tour concerts and released an EP and three singles. During this time, Sun began to learn how to paint. During the painting process, she realized many viewpoints, including the meaning of being a singer. She extended these viewpoints to music, and thus the album A Dancing Van Gogh was born.[2] In the process of creating the album, Sun wanted to make a darker, more dramatic piece, which led to the album's eponymous song, "Dancing Van Gogh", which caught her attention when she first heard the demo version of it in 2014. The song was a hit, and Sun immediately recognized it as the hit song she had in mind. "Madness and sanity go hand in hand" became the theme of the album.[3] During the recording process, Sun discussed with the producer to add many sound effects and background sounds to give the song a sense of theater. The female operatic voice in the song is also sung by Sun. Through Van Gogh's spirit, Sun hoped to encourage her audience to be brave in everything they do.
"A State of Bliss" was the fastest recorded song in the album. On first listen to the demo, Sun was overwhelmed by the atmosphere of the song. The contrast between the calmness of the song and the absolute loneliness of its title, "I'm Happy", was so striking that Sun chose to include it as the album's key lyric.[4] Lyricist Jufang created "Windbreaker", inspired by the idea that "things are objects, not love".[5] The album originally included "The Last Part Goodbye", but it was dropped because it didn't fit the theme of the album.[6] The last song in the album is "Immense Beauty". As the album was approaching its due date, the production team had not yet found a suitable song to close the album, so Sun decided to write the lyrics herself and produced "Extremely Beautiful" in 3 days of seclusion.[7]
