Days of Being Marginalized

While the first albums packaged with the term “Cantopop” were released in 1952, the origin of Cantopop remains an unresolved issue. In the 1950s and the 1960s, Cantopop were not considered mainstream in Hong Kong despite the fact that Cantonese was spoken by over ninety percent of its people. Cantopop could be said to be popular among Hong Kong audience, but most people considered it to be inferior to Mandarin and English popular songs. In the 1960s, Cantopop, albeit gradually gaining popularity in terms of market share, was still very much marginalized. It was only in the mid-1970s that Cantopop finally came to the fore.