Sandy Lam Yik-Lin was born on April 26, 1966. She started out as a part-time DJ at HK Commercial Radio in 1982, and after she finished her schooling she went to work for them fulltime. Her music career was launched when she signed with a record company in 1984. Lam was initially packaged as a “Sweet Sixteen” cutesy teen idol, but she later cultivated a more sophisticated and mature image with the help of producer (and eventual ex-boyfriend) Clarence Hui. She also worked hard on improving her vocals and began infusing diverse music elements like jazz and R&B into her songs. This style change was well received by both fans and music critics alike and Lam was elevated to Pop Queen status.

Since there’s apparently an unwritten rule in Hong Kong that everyone who is anyone has to appear in the movies, Lam fulfilled the minimum requirement for a pop diva almost entirely during the earlier stages of her career. Lam made her official acting debut in The Intellectual Trio (1985), though she had had a very small cameo in Merry Christmas (1984) prior to that. Her largest role to date was in Gift From Heaven (1989) in which she plays a white-collar worker who, along with her co-workers, happens upon a bag of money with dubious origins. Lam made her final movie appearance in Shanghai Shanghai (1990), thereafter putting 100% of her attention into musical pursuits.

Lam shifted her focus to the Japan and Taiwan markets when her popularity back home began to wane, but her star sparkled again on the HK horizon in 1997 when she received rave reviews for her work in Jacky Cheung’s “Snow Wolf Lake” musical. She married Taiwanese singer/songwriter/music producer Jonathan Lee Chung-Sing in 1998 and gave birth to a baby girl that same year. In 2002, Lam embarked upon a successful concert tour that spanned from Hong Kong to Singapore and Malaysia, proof of her enduring popularity across Asia. (Yinique 2003)