Mark Lui
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Mark Lui (雷頌德; born July 9, 1969) is a renowned composer and producer of pop music and is now based in Hong Kong.
Mark Lui studied Material Science at Imperial College London University in England where he met Hong Kong actress and singer Karen Mok.
Lui has worked with a massive range of pop singers in Hong Kong, including Leon Lai, Jacky Cheung, Andy Lau, Miriam Yeung, Leo Ku, Gigi Leung, Kelly Chen, and teen idols Alex Fong and idol group Cookies, to name a handful.
Although he has built a reputation as one of the best Cantopop composers and producers in Hong Kong, critics claim that his works focus on 'karaoke'-style pop songs only, and what's more, many of his works are actually 'copied' from various sources of foreign songs. Mark Lui admits the similarities are due to the fact that he always gets inspiration from the latest foreign songs, but always denies he actually plagiarized them. Nevertheless, there were many famous incidents that his works were found nearly identical to foreign songs in terms of composition and music arrangement.
For example, in 1997, the intro arrangement of his work for Leon Lai, "100 possibilities", was found to be the same as Nanase Aikawa's single "yumemiru shoujo ja ireranai". In 1999, Shiina Ringo released a hit single "Gibusu" which is characterised by a very strange guitar effect. Mark produced a song for Kelly Chen which had exactly the same melody soon after.
In 2006, he produced Justin Lo's second album No Protection. The album, including the cover design, were found similar to The Black Eyed Peas's latest albums, Elephunk and Monkey Business.
Such controversies have aroused public concern and jeer, especially in local internet forums, e.g. HKGolden, where most users have more musical background than the average person in Hong Kong. Many have given Mark Lui the nickname, "music photocopier".
Apart from music producer, Lui is also a singer and actor. He has formed a short-lived band "Dry" with Stephen Fung. He acted in films such as "Rave Fever(周末狂熱)", "求戀期" and "戇星先生".
