Annabelle Louie On Na or Annabelle Lui On Na (; born 4 July 1959), originally known as Lui Wai-Mei (), is a Hong Kong singer, actress and host. She debuted in the early 1980s with the song "When People Are Tears on the Road" (, sung with Michael Kwan), and then became famous with "Don't Remember the Old Dreams" (). She was selected into the Top Ten Chinese Golden Songs of 1981, and her album "Don't Remember the Old Dreams" won the Platinum Record.
Biography.
Early life.
Annabelle Louie's real name is Lui Wai-Mei (). She was born and raised in Hong Kong and has five brothers and sisters. In the late 1970s, she worked as a teller at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation for a year before moving to Sun Hung Kai Securities and Barclays Bank. Like many young people back then, her spare time hobby was singing, so she often participated in singing competitions after work (her competitors, such as Cheung Ming Man, Agnes Chiang, Kinko Cheung, etc., all became singers later).
In a competition, Louie was spotted by Chan Dik-Man of Hong Kong PolyGram.She went for an audition and sang the theme song "When People Are Tears on the Road" () with Hong Kong singer Michael Kwan for the Rediffusion Television (Asia Television's predecessor) drama "Blowing in the Wind". The female vocal part of this song was originally sung by Candice Yu, but was later replaced by Louie due to contract and other issues.The stage name "Lui On Na"() was also given by Ricky Fung, a senior executive of PolyGram at the time, and from then on Lui entered the industry as a singer.
Performing Arts Development.
1981 to 1984 was the heyday of Annabelle Louie in the Hong Kong entertainment industry. Many of her songs became household Cantonese pop songs, and some of her songs are still popular KTV songs today. From 1981 to 1983, PolyGram's Polydor Records released four well-known solo albums for her.: "Old Dreams Don’t Need to Be Remembered" (, 1981), "Song of Colorful Clouds" (, 1982), "Love in Disbelief" (, 1982) and "Warmth Collection" (, 1983). Representative works that were once popular include "When People Cry on the Road" (), "Old Dreams Don't Need to Be Remembered"(, which topped the Commercial Radio chart for nine consecutive weeks and was selected as one of the Hong Kong Radio's top ten of the year), "My Heart Is in a Trouble" (), "Colorful Clouds Song" (), "Farewell" (), "Love Tribulation" (), "Ask Why" (), "Far Away from Home" (), "Warm and Clear Currents in Turbid Times" (), "Unending Love" () and "The Sun Keeps Me" ().
Although Annabelle Louie became popular rapidly from 1981 to 1983, she was only 25 years old at the time and was eager to start a family. Despite the opposition of the record company, she married her then boyfriend (former colleague of Berkeley Bank) Jimmy Lau in a low-key manner in 1983. In 1987, Louie and her husband applied to immigrate to Canada. In 1988, she left the Hong Kong music scene and moved to Vancouver. After that, she worked as a fashion store owner, travel agency owner, and tour guide. She also worked as an advertising spokesperson for a local beauty center. Over the past decade, she has been frequently invited by the Chinese community in North America to perform in cities such as Chicago, Montreal, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Reno, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, New York, and in Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong in Asia.
In the late 1990s, Annabelle Louie began to become a singing teacher, occasionally hosting the New Age Television program in Vancouver and serving as a behind-the-scenes training mentor for contestants of the New Talent Singing Competition Vancouver Auditions. In recent years, Annabelle Louie's husband, who is engaged in the fashion business, has to travel frequently between mainland China and Hong Kong, so she often travels back and forth between Canada and Hong Kong to accompany him.