text | Linghu Boguang
Let’s write about Jay Chou today. First of all, I have to make a statement. I believe anyone who reads my article will find that in the articles about music written by Bo Guangjun in the past two years, as long as Jay Chou is mentioned Focus on criticism.
This is not talking about what Jay Chou was like in the past, but what Jay Chou has done in music in the past few years. How can I put it, showing off is considered good, and being perfunctory and having no attitude is the most ridiculous thing. But the audience is still praising, still defending, and still saying: Come on, that’s Jay Chou.
is like this rock version of Daoxiang. In fact, this song was released on June 14th, but I only saw it occasionally recently.
The reason is that this song is too perfunctory like last year's "Christmas Star". No one listened to it at all, so it didn't become popular. Otherwise, with Jay Chou's popularity, if it is an excellent remix version like Tao Zhe's, fans will not be able to praise it to the sky, saying that he is an eternal superstar in the Chinese music world, that the King of Heaven is returning, and that the music world is trembling.
There is no splash now to prove anything. It proves that fans can’t even brag about it. It’s too perfunctory and bad.
How bad is "Daoxiang Rock Edition"? It's not bad, it's just perfunctory.
The arrangement of this song is particularly bad. How bad is it? Anyway, if you want me to say it from a professional point of view, it's more complicated, so I'll keep it simple. That is, when you listen to it, you will find that the vocals and the new music cannot blend together. Why? Because the vocals weren’t re-recorded at all, you ended up making a new arrangement, and naturally they couldn’t blend together.
It just so happens that the arrangement is particularly bad. This so-called rock version is even more perfunctory, worse and less attitude than last year's "Christmas Star". Strictly speaking, the melody of "Christmas Star" is okay, but there is no rising key. After the rising key, the composition is quite nice. As for the arrangement and accompaniment, it is too simple to copy and paste from beginning to end. It is not as good as the previous songs. Stunning.
At this time, if you are a fan or someone who supports him, you will probably say the following.
Maybe this is also out of Jay Chou's helplessness. Just like the lyrics of the song "Waiting for you to finish class" before, I sang a confession balloon and finally you looked back. Twelve new works of the previous sincere works, exclamation points, etc. Although the arrangement and composition are all With imagination and innovation, but in recent years, especially in the era of Kuaishou Douyin and saliva songs dominating the charts, maybe Jay Chou just wants to put aside the musicality and complexity and only come up with two simple songs that can be sung. High songs.
Who said that Chinese style must use c, d, e, g, a? The song "Christmas Star" still sounds good after the key is raised. However, many songs cannot be sung live due to my voice. Maybe I just want to use a simple melody. The arrangement creates a light, warm minor-key song.
In the previous album, only the chorus of "Still Wandering" was a little too high-pitched, but Jay Chou has not sang "Still Wandering" live for more than a year. The singer did not sing live when he released an album and waited for his hair to grow old, and finally sang It's still wandering, but all the treble parts have been cut off. What is the final result of
? It is possible, maybe, there is a problem with the general environment, and we Jay Chou are forced to have no choice.
Let me ask Zhao Benshan’s words here, why are you, Jay Chou, not facing the big environment while others are not facing the big environment? The general environment is persecuting you Jay Chou, right? Others are not persecuting you anymore?
Let's take a look at his last album "The Greatest Work". Whether this album is perfunctory or not cannot be judged from the perspective of whether it sounds good or not, because this is a matter of judgment. . But the style and expression can be seen.
This album has a total of 11 songs. Except for the title song, they are all small love songs. There are no reflections on social phenomena such as "Dad, I'm Back" and "Daoxiang". There are no reflections on the war such as "The Last Battle" and "The End of the War." "Sorrow", there are no "Grandpa's Tea", "Shanghai 1943" and "The General", which are extremely thoughtful, and there are no "My Father-in-law's Migraine" and "The Little Blacksmith of Milan" that use the past to satirize the present. Not even the "Blue Storm", "Free Teaching Videos" and "Turkish Ice Cream" that he is best at showing off his skills.
I don’t know why you like Jay Chou. I used to listen to his songs, not just because his songs are good, but because each of his albums is different from others. In that era when gods were fighting, it was this different thinking that made him the musical emperor.
10 is the result of Jay Chou's 6 years of development. It's not just Jay Chou who has problems, it's his entire team, including Fang Wenshan. If I didn't tell you, I would have thought that "Beauty is Like Frost" is the lyrics of an internet celebrity song. But even so, I still thought it was just a mistake, and Jay Chou was still the same Jay Chou, until I watched his interview, which completely shattered my illusion.
Life is happy, but what if there is no motivation? Jay Chou was overrated with
"Christmas Star", and then with "Rock Version of Daoxiang" he kept lowering the limit. Now Jay Chou is no longer the Jay Chou who wrote "Compendium of Materia Medica" and "Moulin Rouge". He is no longer the Jay Chou who wants the world to know that Chinese music is the most popular and carries the Chinese music scene forward.
fans and supporters explain what it is, and it has something to do with his situation. The diversity of themes in his previous albums, and his vision and attitude of caring about the outside world. Now he has a son and a daughter, status, friendship, love, family, and money. His dream of directing and paying homage to idol Bruce Lee has also come true. He has seen all kinds of situations. He himself said that he has done everything he wants to do in his life.
Unless there is some major change that can stimulate him, will he still fight hard? This is why my expectations were not very high from the beginning. The so-called article hates destiny. Jay Chou, who is 40 years old, cannot write the same songs as he did when he was 20 years old. As his circumstances change, his songs can no longer be as sharp as they were then.
Now that he has both fame and fortune and a son and a daughter, he desperately protects his old friends by his side. He is more immersed in his own world, pays more attention to his inner feelings, and is less sensitive to the touch of the external world. These are completely reflected in his new album, but similarly, the 20-year-old Jay Chou cannot sing the artistic conception and feeling of the current "Still Wandering". No matter how good Jay Chou is, he is still a human being.
The problem arises at this time, are the other singer-songwriters in the Chinese music scene not human?
If you want to say that Tao Zhe and Wang Leehom both had emotional turmoil, that's fine. In 2020, Wang Feng released a new album "2020", Dao Lang released three new albums, last year "Folk Song" was a hit, and even veteran Cui Jian also released a new album "Light Movement", other albums are not the same. Perfunctory.
By the way, "Brilliant You" sung by Na Ying in "Singer 2024" is the song of the new album. Look at their attitude. Even though there have been no breakthroughs after so many years, the attitude is still there. The arrangement is excellent, the production is well-made, and the lyrics are meaningful, but it is really not as popular as before.
Jay Chou has actually been overrated, not for his previous achievements. In the early years, I did not think that his musical achievements were higher than Tao Zhe's. Jay Chou followed Tao Zhe's path in localizing R&B, and his innovations in the melody and singing style of fast songs are eye-catching, but why is Tao Zhe the godfather of Chinese R&B and not Jay Chou?
What about, is the Chinese music industry collectively persecuting Jay Chou, or is there some other reason?
Not to mention, I don’t think Jay Chou’s achievements may exceed that of Daolang. Daolang combined northwest folk music with pop music and contributed new musical forms to world music. Although he is not the first person in this regard, he is still very successful. In his early years, Jay Chou had a powerful arranger team to enrich his songs, and his listening experience and style were indeed superior.
Daolang does not have such an arrangement team, but the lyrics composed by Daolang himself are outstanding. Fang Wenshan's lyric writing skills are definitely overestimated. So to sum it up, Dao Lang was probably lower than Jay Chou in his early years (his commercial achievements were no less than Zhou's back then).
After all, Daolang's lack of arrangement and polishing has gradually led to a monotonous listening style of songs, which is indeed a shackle that he needs to break free from.
Later, Daolang retreated for nearly ten years. He went to all parts of the country to collect music in order to seek a new paradigm of combining traditional ethnic music and modern pop music. He finally broke through himself. Several new albums starting in 20 years injected new music styles into the Chinese music scene. The power of it is to break through its own inherent music style.
What about Jay Chou? What did he do? It can be said that he has rested on his laurels since 2008. After bidding farewell to the three kings of arrangers, the gorgeous appearance of his team's arrangers has long faded, and the quality of music is not as good as before. After several albums, the level has regressed, and the style has not made any breakthrough. The most recent one The album is even seriously salivating.
is not much better than others. Neither of them are pioneers in their respective music styles in terms of innovation, but they have combined their unique melodic talents to achieve good commercialization. The lyrics by Jay Chou and Fang Fang are far inferior, and the strong arrangement is not entirely to Jay Chou's own strength.
Now that people are making progress and breaking through themselves, what is Jay Chou doing? The two of them are from the same era, and Daolang is even older than him. How can Jay Chou have the dignity to mention that he is the number one in the Chinese music industry? Is he worthy?
Compared with Tao Zhe and Wang Leehom, Jay Chou is really too "degenerate"
I am actually not surprised by the current public opinion towards Jay Chou. Jay Chou himself is not to blame, but let's look at the secondary factors.
There was no doubt about Jay Chou's strength before, but various media, especially after the short video era, praised Jay Chou too much. Now passers-by and audiences accept Jay Chou's music because he is Jay Chou, not because of the quality of Jay Chou's music. They follow the trend and choose Jay Chou. to listen to songs, but only those popular songs.
The broad audience does not represent the broad core audience. The vast majority of people choose Jay Chou because of the entertainment accessories and following the trend. This is very disruptive to any creator. Such attention is actually a burden for creators. In the past few years before Jay Chou debuted, not only him, but also a large number of Chinese music circles released albums every year. The core audience was satisfied, but it did too much harm to the musicians. Such frequency of updates, concert signings, variety shows, etc. either drains out inspiration or causes a significant decline in physical condition.
That group of creators back then released studio albums with a frequency of updating basically every two to three years, or even longer. Making music is supposed to be slow-paced and constantly accumulating, but Zhou chose to live a peaceful life, which is okay. However, public opinion is too emotional, and it doesn't matter all kinds of accusations and even attacks. It is the standard that the traffic and the public subjectively set for Jay Chou. This is also one of the problems.
In the past few years, Jay Chou was the most popular. In comparison, Tao Zhe and Wang Leehom were no longer good. Why did Tao Zhe and Wang Leehom become popular again? In addition to "Let's escape together" and various style memes, the main thing is whether Tao Zhe also adapted the song. The result is that the adaptation is very careful, and netizens can still feel it.
Really stop bragging about the current Jay Chou, he is more than just bad.
