文|Linghu Boguang
January 2024 has almost passed. Last year was a landmark year for Chinese pop culture, including movies, TV series, and animations. The same is true even in music. With Mayday lip-syncing and then Jay Chou writing songs like "Christmas Star", Taiwan's music scene, which was already in decline, was also torn off its mask when the audience became a god on the Internet.
To put it bluntly, Taiwan’s music scene has actually declined a long time ago. Jay Chou and others have been able to survive for many years based on their emotions.
2023 proves that Taiwan’s music scene is serious and outdated. At this time, the problem arises. If Jay Chou becomes obsolete, will it become Hua Chenyu's era? My answer is that it's impossible. It's not that his songs are popular, but that people haven't discovered it yet.
In fact, Hua Chenyu is almost "obsolete" in the era of Chinese pop music. This obsolescence means that his music style, his music creation, and his popularity and popularity in the market have all fallen into decline. A music king and leader will basically be reached a few years before his debut. It is impossible for
to reach the peak for the second time after debuting for about ten years. Jay Chou's peak in the past few years has also been in the mainstream pop music world. And his audience is now the Internet's prime people, so he has been popularized again, not Jay Chou. The works he created have once again led the Chinese music scene.
fans are crazy, the song just isn’t popular? Whether Hua Chenyu is talented or not
I personally don’t admire Hua Chenyu that much, but
In the Chinese music scene of the generation after Jay Chou, when the mainstream is guava love songs and revolves around Zhou Wang Taolin, his music style is at least There is a breakthrough.
But his role in the music market is very awkward. He himself wants to rely on the aesthetics of independent music listeners. In the early days, songs such as "Alien", "I Don't Care About You" and "To Be Free" contained a little bit of hard rock metal elements. Ordinary listeners thought it was too noisy and couldn't appreciate it, and as a result, his singing became even more so.
Real hard rock fans will think that his songs are actually pop songs. The guitars and drums do not compete with the vocals and are not exciting. The mix sounds like a "rock" song with the aesthetics of a pop song.
For example, the guitar arrangement of "I Care About You" and "To Be Free" is actually quite good. I think the overall sound quality is similar to that of pretty reckless bands. There are also some alternative songs that have this problem, such as Julu, Salt of the Earth, Sacred Tree (personally favorite Hua's song) and "Arrival", these songs are completely different from the songs of mainstream singers in the Chinese music scene.
But for listeners who may usually like radiohead and led zeppelin (two bands that Hua borrowed from), these songs are still too popular. Low emotional intelligence means that Hua Chenyu's music does not please the public aesthetics, resulting in little popularity, and does not please independent music audiences, so he is criticized as nondescript.
What do I admire about him? In Chinese pop and rock, there has never been a "rock idol" with a very iconic temperament for girls to pursue, such as Sebastian Bach and Bon Jovi (it may have been Dou Wei who was involved in the earliest). You can't say that Wang Feng and Da Zhangwei are like rock idols. Right).
I personally like 80s pop metal. At first glance, Hua Chenyu has a relatively handsome appearance, gorgeous typhoon, and treble, which makes me feel more friendly and have a fantasy of what it would be like for him to form a gold-plated band.
In the second Chinese music market, after the influence of Zhou Wang Taolin gradually faded, from 2015 to now, there seems to be no big star who dares to be new and different, such as Xue Zhiqian, Li Ronghao, Zhang Jie, etc. You may be scolded for what you say next, but tell the truth.
Joker Xue is an urban bitter love song, the most substandard kind of pop music. Of course, if you like it, I won't object.
Li Ronghao is spinning in Zhou Tao's rb, Taiwan's urban love song.Even Zhang Jie cannot be compared to a singer. In fact, those who were slightly more interesting and breakthrough at the same time were Chen Li, Zhao Lei (representative male and female singers of mainland new folk songs who came to the stage), Liang Bo (representative of mainland rock singer-songwriters after Wang Feng) ), and finally Huo Z who adopts ancient and Chinese styles (which is different from Zhou’s Chinese style).
But the last three are not as popular as the former. The only one who can compete and be interesting is Deng Ziqi. But this is Hong Kong and Taiwan singer-songwriters, just like Jam Hsiao (pop rock), Xu Jiaying, etc. half a generation earlier.
Hua Chenyu's catchy melodic songs such as "The King and the Beggar", "Dust in the Fireworks" and "I Really Want to Love the World" are actually quite popular. He can definitely make many such songs, but he still chooses to sing them in absolute numbers. In most cases, I stick to my own aesthetic and make music that is out of place in the mainstream music circle.
I appreciate this and have had some successful attempts at it.
is very popular, but the song is not popular? Is Hua Chenyu talented?
Hua Chenyu’s early song styles, singing, and performances were all relatively uniform, and the standards were also the highest. In addition to the songs mentioned above, there are also masterpieces "Dust in Fireworks" and "Here we are" (the former was not written by him). The album "Sacred Tree" is indeed a good religious pop song. Think about it, what is the Chinese music scene? Not less.
If you are looking for something similar, it is like "All Things Are Born". It is still a Chinese religion, and the lyrics, music, arrangement and singing of this song are quite unified, and the scene is also very shocking. This song is different from current Chinese songs. It's particularly shocking and powerful. "Arrival" from the same album, the previous "Salt of the Earth", "Ephemera", "Let You Go", "Quasimodo's Gift", Xun, I personally think the demo version of Xun sounds better. I also accidentally discovered for forever.
Until now, I have been paying attention to Hua Chenyu’s songs and some of his previous and current views on songs.
My personal feeling is that from the songs in his fifth album to the two recently released ones, the only ones that made me fall in love immediately upon hearing them were "Light the Bonfire at the End of the Galaxy" and "When the World Forgot Me", and neither did the rest of the songs. In the early days, the style of music, singing and style felt integrated.
By the way, Hua Chenyu’s last album was not very good, such as "Flowers in a Small Town" which performed very well live. It is another song with lyrics, music, arrangement, and expression that are very integrated. This song is a bit like a folk song, where fantasy and reality are born toward the sun. But both arrangements on the album are boring.
also had many failed attempts. Fans of "Sevenfold Personality" were blown away by it, but I really felt that it was not very complete (to be honest, the album "New World" had a pretty good temperament). This is also the main problem with Hua Chenyu's songs, so I won't analyze it in detail here.
How to put it, Hua Chenyu wants to pursue Western dark, religious, opera, and other complex styles (compared to the Chinese music scene). This kind of song originally weakens the melody, emphasizes rhythm and a certain musical style. Hua Chenyu has performed well before, but the arrangement, production and instrumental arrangement cannot be integrated well.
He can only use rap, tearing high notes, and performance to top it off. Adaptations of other similar songs such as "Cancer", "Earth", "Exaggerated", "Ordinary Road", etc. are all in this style. This kind of song is naturally not popular among the Chinese music scene, and not many people accept it, which is normal.
But you find out why it doesn’t seem to be very popular in the industry, nor is it popular among music fans.
The answer lies in the independent means mentioned above, but in popular thinking, here are a few examples. The independent music scene is better at adopting this music style. Let’s not mention Wanqing’s rock and roll, just this kind of religious music. In the past few years, there have been two new generation representatives in the Chinese music scene: Fu Lu Shou (now called Doudou) and Taiwanese Kelaqi.
Fu Lu Shou's level is higher than Kelaqi's. Fu Lu Shou has a classical foundation of Yangyin + multiple narrative structures + strong arrangement, production and harmony.Coupled with the sisters' musical aura, musical talent and unique understanding of subculture.
Therefore, the same religious songs, such as "Transfer Me", "Mei" and "Lanruo Tara" by Fu Lushou, are very strong. Even if they make mistakes, you can judge whether their songs will be popular or become gods in the music circle. They are all representatives of mainland religious songs.
Hua Chenyu is very intimidating on the surface, but his arrangement, production, instrumental music and harmony are relatively poor. He can only use rap, tearing high notes, and various exaggerated performances to support him. He is weak in musicality and professionalism. In the end, the music circle felt it was not enough, and the general audience could not appreciate it.
Mayday lip syncs, Jay Chou disappoints? But Hua Chenyu cannot become the "New King"
Hua Chenyu's music concept is close to European and American glam rock/psychedelic rock, and he has also tried to combine rap and religious music. There are some other music styles, but they are quite complicated and the achievements are not enough. This has always been his problem. For example, Wanqing's output is very low, with only two albums, but it does not hinder its status in Chinese rock, Chinese rock bands, and Chinese independent music.
But what is Hua Chenyu’s representative music style? Is it relatively blurry?
The era of music stars from Luo Dayou, Li Zongsheng to Zhou Wang Taolin, who are well-known across the country in the mainstream music scene, has passed. This phenomenon will no longer occur in the Internet era, so even if Hua Chenyu does better music, he will not The identity of a musician has such a large national popularity, and variety show stars and music variety adaptations and covers are probably Hua Chenyu's most "popular" labels.
I think the era of mainstream music has passed. Now I think domestic musicians such as Wanqing, Caodong, and Fu Lu Shou have explored the ceiling of independent music at the market level. Many people like it, but they are far from the top. Everyone knows it.
These music may not be too popular, but they are the future of the Chinese music scene.
