EURO
In late November 2020, during the Pasha de Cartier Party Live Stream, Jackson
Wang covered 分手總要在雨天. An elegant cover for a luxury event? Not quite.
Cartier, a generation and the idea of forging your own path
In 2020, Cartier chose Jackson Wang to represent the new generation of the Pasha watch, alongside Rami Malek, Troye Sivan, Willow Smith and Maisie Williams. The campaign brought together five personalities from very different worlds — film, music, fashion — around a single idea: individuality, creativity and the courage to build your own path.
A few months later, during the Pasha party livestream, Jackson didn't reach for one of his own songs. He covered a track deeply tied to Hong Kong's musical memory: 分手總要在雨天, made famous by Jacky Cheung.
A song that often circulates under the wrong title
The performance regularly circulates under the title 一路上有你. But that name belongs to the Mandarin version, released on Jacky Cheung's 1993 album 吻別. The song Jackson performs is actually the Cantonese version, released a year earlier.
✕ 一路上有你 — Mandarin version · 1993 · album 吻別 (the title the video circulates under)
✓ 分手總要在雨天 — Cantonese version · May 1992 · album 真情流露 (what he actually sings)
Both tracks share the same melody, but not the same lyrics or title. The Cantonese title roughly translates as "Breakups always happen on rainy days." The detail may seem minor, but it changes how you look at the performance: Jackson isn't covering just any Chinese ballad — he's taking on a Cantopop classic tied to one of Hong Kong's most respected voices.
A classic… that actually comes from Japan
And there's one more layer, often overlooked. Neither the Cantonese nor the Mandarin version is an original composition: both adapt a Japanese song, 泣けない君へのラブソング by Nobuteru Maeda (前田亘輝) of the band TUBE, composed by Keiji Katayama.
The song's journey: 日本 (Maeda / TUBE, 1991) → 香港 (Cantonese, 1992) → 國語 (Mandarin, 1993) → Jackson (Cartier, 2020).
In other words, the song has been traveling for a long time: from Japan to Hong Kong, then into Mandarin. By covering it, a Hong Kong-born artist turned global simply adds one more stop to a track that has always crossed borders.
Between local heritage and an international career
By 2020, Jackson was already a global artist. He debuted in South Korea, built his solo career in China and increasingly worked in English to reach an international audience. Hearing him return to a fully Cantonese song therefore creates a direct link to the city where he was born and raised. But that link also placed the performance under a particularly demanding spotlight.
A divided reception
After it aired, some praised the emotion and the recognizable texture of his voice. Other Hong Kong listeners were far harsher. They criticized his diction and accent, going as far as accusing him of an "ABC" accent on a Cantonese song, and even of disrespecting the original singer. The comparison with Jacky Cheung, a local monument, made the scrutiny even more unforgiving.
So it would be too easy to frame this video as a flawless Cantonese performance that was unfairly forgotten. It probably wasn't flawless. It was, however, sincere, unusual within his career, and striking enough to have stirred affection, nostalgia and criticism all at once.
Why bring it back now?
Because this performance tells several Jacksons at once. There's the international ambassador chosen by Cartier to embody a generation that refuses ready-made paths. There's the Hong Kong artist returning to one of his city's classics. And there's the person facing the very particular expectations placed on someone who has built a life across several languages, countries and industries.
It may not be his best-known cover, or his most technically flawless. And that's exactly what makes it interesting five years on. It captures a moment where Jackson isn't only trying to impress: he returns to a song loaded with collective memory, with his own voice, his own accent, and all the debate that came with it. For that alone, it deserves better than fading away at the bottom of Internet.