Katherine Ho is best known for her Mandarin cover of Coldplay’s “Yellow” in the film Crazy Rich Asians, which topped Spotify’s Global Viral 50 chart and has garnered over 20 million streams across all platforms.
Since Crazy Rich Asians, Katherine has lent her voice to several prestigious commercial, TV, and film projects that celebrate AAPI identity, including the opening song for the hit Netflix animation Wish Dragon; a guest appearance on the Netflix chart-topping original show, Bling Empire; the theme song for the award-winning short film Let’s Eat; a jingle for a national Panda Express ad; and the voice of Draculaura for the Monster High brand.
Ho, a past contestant on NBC’s The Voice, remembers when she got wind of the gig. A director from A Cappella Academy, a summer camp she attended in high school, called to ask if she could sing in Mandarin and if she would be interested in recording a demo for an unidentified film or TV project.
Ho jumped at the chance and recorded it in a practice room on campus. She recorded the song for hours while her parents, who immigrated to the U.S. from China, coached her dialect over the phone.
“I really do think being Chinese-American is a separate identity from being just American or just Chinese. I think the song is symbolic of this. It’s this classic Western hit with Mandarin lyrics,” she said. “It sounds cheesy. I have never been more proud of my Asian-American identity until I saw this film.”