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The secret to Jolin Tsai’s most celebrated albums, according to British producer Richard Craker, has less to do with technique than with trust – and a willingness to sit with uncertainty until the music finds its shape.
The final conference of the 2026 Golden Melody Festival in Taiwan, held ahead of the Golden Melody Awards, and moderated by Kuang-ping Tso, president of Kouhei Production, brought Craker – founder of Karma Sounds Ltd. and the producer behind Jolin Tsai’s “Ugly Beauty” and “Pleasure” – into conversation about his international career, his philosophy of creativity, and what it will take for Mandopop to find its footing on the world stage. Tsai would go on to win awards at the ceremony, including Album of the Year for “Pleasure” and Best Mandarin Female Singer on Saturday evening.
During the conference, titled “Connecting Global Sounds: Richard Craker’s Creative Journey from International Markets to Mandopop,” Craker recalled the early songwriting sessions with Jolin’s team at Karma Studios in Thailand as feeling like “a musical holiday” – an open, experimental environment where genres were tried and discarded freely, and where “Ugly Beauty” eventually took shape.
“Pleasure” was more of a challenge. Craker described Tsai as a perfectionist with a sharp eye for detail, so the chorus took longer to complete – it later clicked in a Los Angeles session with songwriter Ross Golan. These types of experiences, he said, are simply what creativity looks like. What sustains him through that process, Craker added, is watching an artist move from merely singing a song to fully inhabiting it.
His advice to young songwriters was borrowed from Ed Sheeran: when you first turn on a tap, dirty water comes out before the clean water flows. Write badly, write often, and trust that the good ideas are on the other side of the imperfect ones. Moderator Tso connected this to Taiwanese singer-songwriter WeiBird’s principle of “fast, bad, wrong.”
As for AI, Craker noted that technology cannot replicate human connection, emotion, or genuine artistic expression – and those, he argued, are what music is ultimately for.
On the bigger question of how Mandopop can grow internationally, Craker said there is no specific formula. But watching the global rises of K-pop and Latin music, he sees a clear lesson – both broke through by embracing their own cultural identities rather than imitating Western sound.
