text | Linghu Boguang
Let's write about "Sister Lang" today. This program has already started airing. Of course, this year's one is called "Chengfeng 2024". I personally don't like this kind of variety show that pretends to be a music variety show but actually provides entertainment. Interest, I didn’t write about it from a music perspective in the previous seasons. After all, they are all variety shows with realistic gimmicks + entertainment operations.
If we think about it carefully, this variety show is quite similar to Jia Ling 's " Hot and Spicy ", which is simply a positioning.
However, I found something strange about the two seasons of the show, that is, the variety show chose mainland sisters and Hong Kong and Taiwan sisters. There are famous actresses who have passed their time (positioned to become popular). Now more and more people sing and dance with them, which is completely different. There is one thing that few people have noticed about being an internet celebrity (to keep the topic afloat).
That means that there are fewer and fewer talented Chinese musicians it chooses, while the foreign musicians it chooses are all talented.
Of course, strictly speaking, it is not without them, such as this season’s Shang Wenjie , Sa Dingding , Yuan Yawei , Wan Nida , etc. But they are all veterans of mainland variety shows. Judging from past shows, they have no chance of becoming popular. Instead, the foreign artists chosen were Japan's Miyori Rea last season, Sasha Alex Sloan this season, Australian singer Cai Shiyun, Vietnamese singer Sun Xialing, etc.
Everyone needs to be good-looking, good-looking, and good-looking. The Chinese audience is not familiar with them, but the works are good. Once you perform well on stage and have a surprise, it's easy to become popular. This is a bit like using old Chinese variety show veterans and incompetent Internet celebrities to set off has-been stars from Hong Kong and Taiwan and foreign dark horses.
From the previous season Cyndi Wang , last season Meiyi Liya, this season will have another popular foreign sister, netizens will be overwhelmingly scolding the Chinese music scene is over, internal entertainment pills, and then whatever, this seems to have become a Routine, sacrificing yourself to help others, is quite great.
"Lang Jie 5" deliberately flattered Hong Kong and Taiwan stars, dark horse foreign sisters? Yes
So are there dark horse sisters and low-key singing and dancing stars in the Mainland? I don’t know much about singing and dancing, but there are definitely some on the musician level. But the show’s strength is given to variety show veterans (probably easy to talk about), its popularity is given to Internet celebrities (there are topics to talk about), and the remaining two positions are given to Hong Kong and Taiwan celebrities and foreign sisters.
This brings up another question: Is the Chinese music scene in decline?
The pop music scene is indeed in decline. The styles of the European, American and Japanese music scenes have been updated again and again, but we are still treading water. Isn't this the most problematic part?
First, based on the impact of short videos, we can conclude that the decline of music is inevitable, but it is not that serious. Short videos impact all aspects of the entertainment industry, including books, movies, TV series, and independent games. Are these also simple? Is it possible that music is just one of the victims of the impact of short videos, and that its impact has nothing to do with its own attributes?
Secondly, commercial music production is not popularized. My feeling is that the current threshold for music production has never been higher. Just like game production, previous games only needed one or two bright spots to be popular, but now they require excellent graphics that are close to the 3A level to be competitive. The same goes for
music. Professional sound source sampling and mixing equipment is very expensive and has extremely high hardware requirements. It is simply not supported by ordinary mobile phones, notebooks, or ordinary home desktops. This is why commercial pop music production now mainly relies on studios and is mostly created by teams.
From my personal point of view, there are various reasons for the Chinese music scene to stop, but if you look at the booming music scenes in Japan, South Korea, Europe and the United States, you should find that the problem does not lie with the music scene, but with the Chinese pop music scene. Like other entertainment industries in our decline, we need to focus on our own causes rather than blaming music itself.
is actually very simple. It requires a good record company, that is, a publisher, and musicians cannot just look at how to do it well from an artistic point of view. They should look at the role of music in the entire industry chain from the perspective of the entire industry. status, so that we can know that music is often used as an accessory to film and television products.
For example, several major record companies in the world, Sony, Universal, Columbia, Warner, Emperor, and Walt Disney.
In many cases, the record music department is established for the soundtrack of film and television dramas of media groups. Because the music used in foreign movies is almost all original music, this forces companies to hire good composers and singers to score the soundtrack. This also leads to why They have so much music in their music library and will sign so many singers.
And through good movie soundtracks, use good movies to advertise your own music, which in turn music can also advertise movies. So it's a pretty good deal.
For example, the soundtrack of "007" was directly sung by Adele, a singer signed by the same group's record company. The music in DreamWorks (or which company)'s "The Voice of Joy" simply used the singer to sing directly.
For example, Walt Disney will create a music copyright for each long-form animation promotion, which will be used to promote new talents that Walt Disney's own record department wants to promote.
and even Japan's Sony Music, most of their copyright libraries use their own singers to score animated films.
Because a good soundtrack is necessary to improve the quality of a movie, the industry has to support originality and protect intellectual property rights.
is also released by domestic mainstream music producers. Basically, the copyrights they hold are not their own. They are purchased from overseas Emperor Warner. For example, most singers from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan are basically purchased by Emperor Warner. Signing.
Looking at the decline of the Chinese music scene from "Sister Lang"? They don't care about people.
Have you noticed any problems? Although Mango Channel cannot be compared with Disney, Sony, etc., it is a big platform and big capital in China. However, the opportunity to support newcomers has never been given to the mainland. Instead, it has been given to outdated stars and foreigners from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Probably because it is easier to cash in commercially, and finding new people from the mainland requires training, which takes more time and money.
Domestic music publishers are just copyright porters. So when the publisher is just a copyright porter, he naturally has no interest in the protection of his own original music or intellectual property rights. Instead, he will be very interested in suppressing new music producers.
Because if there are young talented musicians, they are likely to compete for the music copyrights held by these porters. Therefore, they would rather destroy you than cultivate those new musicians. Only in this way can the copyright in their hands be more valuable and not shrink.
So for the domestic mainstream pop music industry, it is actually more of a commercial accessory.
This is probably due to the popularity of participating in variety shows. Whether it is a once-famous artist or a foreign star, they will definitely have more works than newcomers. Performing and singing songs everywhere, making endorsements, and doing various business activities to make quick money. If you ask what to do if you don’t make any money after making money, you can film another season.
The principle is that simple, you let him train new people, establish an industrial chain and repeatedly produce works. Don't want to invest? Don’t need time? Don’t need energy? This can have seasons of programs combined with each other to make quick money.
Marx has expounded the nature of capitalism and predicted its demise. But this does not mean that capitalism has not developed since Marx’s time. And its development is also consistent with the material conditions of the times. For example, with the development of mass media, the symbolic value of commodities was reshaped by advertising, and Baudrillard wrote "Consumer Society". With the advent of the information age, the cost of copying information is almost zero, which is why the theory of simulacra proposed in "Symbolic Exchange and Death" comes into being.
From this perspective, we can find that since the era of "Super Girl", the major companies, platforms and capital behind China's mainland pop music are simply more capitalist than capitalism and not as good as Western and Japanese capitalism. It’s not even as good as the traditional model in Hong Kong and Taiwan.
The most critical problem is that the Chinese audience is just like this again, just like they like Chinese music that has beautiful melodies, recognizable sounds, and just a few musical styles.
"Lang Jie 5" can't save the Chinese music scene? Nonsense, it is not a music variety show
To be honest, like most variety shows in China, the first season was pretty good. Although it has many shortcomings, it is at least sincere. It is not a singing and dancing variety show, but it can also be regarded as a music variety show (combining women's issues and so on). Now it is the variety show version of "Hot and Spicy", and that's really it.
If you're looking for music and girl power from this show, it's like looking for realism in "Hot Buzz," gimmicks.
Of course, this is not a big deal. Most ordinary people cannot analyze the quality of a song like professionals. They can only judge the quality of a song from other people's evaluations. Ordinary people can only tell whether it is good or bad. I think as long as it sounds good to most people who don’t understand music, a comfortable song is considered a good song.
Art should not be the prestige of a few people. Art should go to the people and people who don’t understand art, so that people who don’t understand art can accept and love it. Therefore, the development trend of pop music is not so much that it has become worse, but that it has become more popular. The power to determine pop music lies in whether most people like it. It is not so much that people’s appreciation level has become worse now, but that more people are participating in it. , and most of them are ordinary people outside the industry.
I am optimistic about this change in entertainment arts. Because most of the purposes of art are to make people resonate happily, and now there are some saliva songs that can make most audiences feel happy and listen well, which is great.
This kind of variety show can make most ordinary people happy to watch it, and even scolding it makes them happy, so that's fine.
Rather than letting Chinese music and music variety shows return to the past, the most basic thing is to give most busy people, ordinary people more time, more leisure time to listen to music slowly, but this requires a long development process , so now those musicians who stand in the upper echelons of society, or students who have a lot of free time, criticize that because of popular music and ordinary people's lack of free time, they like fast-food music. This is an inevitable trend that the mainland music is regressing and some "why not eat meat" "A sense of self-superiority.
What changes is not music, but the lives of ordinary people that are slowly changing.
So you have to listen more, sharpen your ears, and gradually you will be able to filter even if you don’t understand music. Now it is because there is neither a mature filtering mechanism nor the corresponding environment and enough patience to let the listeners filter by themselves. But for ordinary people, music and variety shows are just embellishments. People who like music will find their own way to explore.
Ordinary listeners/enthusiasts/professionals are mixed in the current network environment, making various voices, and commenting on a certain song at will. It is difficult to say whether it is good or bad. It is better to separate into circles quickly and have their own circles. While being cute, they also respect each other, instead of attacking and cursing wantonly. At least everyone is left in peace.
