This year is the day of Universal's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of its Polygram brand, so the online launch of "Polygram 50th Anniversary Half Century New Century" was held, Tan Yonglin, Zhong Zhentao, Lei Anna, Lu Yunna and Tang Baoru reviewed Polygram's classic deeds in the past 50 years, and also told their stories of what happened in Polygram.
Subsequently, on May 12, the MV clip of Polygram's 50th anniversary dance skewer "Stars on PolyGram 50" was first launched on major platforms, and the Polygram 50 concert will be held in November...
The faces in "Stars on PolyGram 50" are all twenty-thirty years ago, I have not seen Xueyou brother, and there are no new faces, although the atmosphere is nostalgic but a little awkward, just like the current Hong Kong music.
To reminisce about the past, it is better to open the history of Polygram and look at the Polygram 25th Anniversary Concert, when the stars twinkled and the climax of the "Supreme Trio" (Jacky Cheung, Tam Wing Lin, Dawn), which is the official handover of newcomers and predecessors, the peak period of Polygram, and the most brilliant era in the history of Hong Kong music.
Of course, today's theme is not the history of PolyGram, but it can also be said to be. After all, the dawn of eight years of cooperation with PolyGram, which was held by PolyGram, is also an important angle to cut into Poly Gold records. Due to space limitations, emphasis will be placed on major events around 1995.
丨 Prince Charming Will you come tonight?
Du Kefeng said he was the most handsome man he had ever photographed. Huang Baigao said that he was the most stylish singer I had ever met.
As for Chen Kexin, he said that he looked very Classic, with the appearance of a Shanghai movie star in the 40s, which was more suitable for watching on the big screen.
I remember that CCTV had a program dedicated to introducing characters many years ago, and one of the issues talked about Dawn, saying that when he was first popular, he rewrote the history of male stars on magazine covers that could not be sold, which led to a boom in magazine covers for male stars.
In fact, no one has examined the cause of this kind of teaching. It is said that this statement is biased towards the old Liang, and one bite of "Dawn Red is because of handsomeness, good luck." "It's a bit of a painting style.
But in that year, on June 7, 1991, the editorial office report of Hong Kong Weekly wrote: "The myth of Stephen Chow has been established, but what about dawn? What about the myth of dawn? In the past two months, the dawn has come very strongly, the press has run against each other, and the dawn era has come! ”
"The number of letters received by Xiang Zhou alone, asking Dawn to make a cover, and more photos, and interviews, has been countless in recent months. In the past, weekly magazines were very afraid of using male artists as covers, but looking at the newsstands recently, Dawn became the proud son of the cover, and the big books and details were all vying to use Dawn... The dawn is red. ”
The songbooks in vinyl on his first album used B3s that were wider than A4 paper. The poster in vinyl from the second album was large enough to fill a rectangular dining table with two people sitting side by side. All of this is nothing more than PolyGram's desire to create an idol model that shakes people's hearts by appearance.
Sure enough, the third album, the report rate plus the publicity offensive was rewarded, and "Is Love is The Edge" won the 91ST IFPI sales champion.
He is also the most popular cover character for magazines. Metro Radio has won the "Golden Heart Perfect Lover Award" for five consecutive Golden Mood Songs.
Hong Kong finally has a well-deserved Prince Charming.
"Artists are most afraid of "stereotyping", all year round is a suit bone and a faction of male brother image HEROACH does not necessarily work every time, Hong Kong people are busy, all the time talk about fresh breakthroughs, other competitors break out, you stand by and avoid a corner of nonsense is really eclipsed." '95 '95 '09' "Outside the Horn" (Dawn in the Neon Shadow)
In fact, he understood, when he was just red, he had no confidence, and then he wanted to change again and again. When I took the fifth perfect lover award, I said: "It is embarrassing to promote an award every year, because there is no perfect lover in the world, I am a perfect title at work, but I can use the ringing lover degree, because I have no time to drag, how can there be perfection?" Only thanks to Fans for your support. ”
On the day of the signing of Xinli Records in 1998, he was even more amazing: "When I heard 'Prince Charming', I felt like throwing up. ”
No matter how good you look, once it becomes a burden... For example, the media asked him "fans chased you and were beaten by your aunt and threatened to commit suicide", how did he answer? The ending is a slap in the face of everyone, and it turns out that it is also a mistake to look good.
But can the public and the media accept Dawn's blonde lipstick, singing "DNA Error" that promotes the same sex, and the neutral image of the demon and wild?
丨 Legend about the 50 million contract and the 100 million contract
In 1992, ten "one-night love" first red pavilion solo singing hits and 93 additional "summer love" twenty full, but also let the record company see more business opportunities, in 1993 after getting the "most popular male singer" of the golden song, the renewal of the contract was finally put on the table.
In fact, Dawn's contract will not be until the end of 94, and now it is only the beginning of 94. According to IFPI statistics, Dawn's record sales last year were only below Jacky Cheung, and its retention is enough to affect PolyGram's annual performance, and it is also an indispensable pillar to compete with Warner at present.
The earliest price of 50 million is said to be BMG, and later the more outrageous, in addition to the local Starlight, Rolling Stones, Jiayin and even the rival Warner, as for the transnational, it is EMI, Xinli, Japan's Pony Canyon, the price is also spread to 100 million.
What exactly is the so-called contract premium? In fact, it is the royalties of the prepaid singer (popularly speaking, it is a dividend), in general, the more famous the singer, the higher his royalties are drawn, taking Xu Guanjie as an example, he is 16%.
If he has not yet reached that position, but his upward trend is becoming more and more obvious, and the sales of the first season of many record companies in 1994 have not reached expectations, so the king-level singer who signed the "must sell" would rather invest more and make less money, and can also stand firm in the market.
But how could PolyGram give up so easily? Soon it was reported that Zheng Donghan, the president of the Far East region, invited Dawn to dinner and personally retained the news.
The reporter asked Dawn for confirmation, and he said:
"Zheng Donghan will occasionally eat with me, it doesn't matter whether he specializes or not, he looks for everyone the same."
"Did you keep it yourself?"
"No, he just told everyone to cooperate."
"Isn't that called retention?"
At the end of the question, he said: "These are all highly confidential, forgive me for not making a fuss, there is still a competition between the record companies, this is my integrity." ”
Chuan Yiyi two years invited him to jump ship, he helplessly said: "It's not good to use the number game again, it's not very good for me, such a large number is impossible, it is invisible pressure on me, and it is unfair to the company." ”
It seems that the wind and waves are calm, who knows that in June, the "East Weekly" published an article "Dawn Renewal Twist Zi Baolijin Seized 150,000 New Discs".
The article said: After Zheng Donghan personally went out to retain Dawn earlier, as if the dust had settled, Liu Yuhua, manager of Poly Gold, even announced that Dawn had renewed his contract.
However, last week, there was a sudden sharp turn, dawn denied that the contract had been renewed, and claimed that the agency and PolyGram still had details of the problem, suggesting that they were still in conflict with other record companies, and PolyGon temporarily pulled out his lead singer's sun plan.
The last time he met with Zheng Donghan, he had verbally promised to renew his contract with PolyGram, and this time there was a storm, most likely because the manager felt that the provisions of the contract did not meet the ideal in terms of ensuring that Dawn obtained fair benefits.
PolyGon's response was that two weeks ago, all the publicity work on dawn's new disc was withdrawn, including the new disc's advertising on radio and television, newspapers and magazines, and even MTV's "Blue Street Lights", which was filmed and ready to be promoted for a song, to "That Day I Don't Want You", which has been launched for nine weeks, and MTV is also a clip of the superstar's pure album.
The 150,000 new discs of "Heaven and Earth Love", which were ready to go out on June 9, were held in the warehouse, along with Chinese song discs, which could not be released until the middle of July.
I think that when dawn was no one in Huaxing, but in just four years, from a newcomer to the status of the king of heaven, The efforts of Baoli Jin's referee pei were the most meritorious, if he did not renew his contract, it was inevitable that he would be accused of being an anti-bone boy who did not drink water and think of the source, why was he willing to take this risk and turn to the arms of others?
This comes down to PolyGram's balance with the big guy (Jacky Cheung) and er zai (Dawn), and PolyGram's fight against Warner. When Aaron Kwok did not vote for Warner, Polygon clamped down on one heavenly king (Andy Lau) with two heavenly kings, because Jacky Cheung's strength is strong, the amount of discs sold is higher than that of Liu and Li, naturally relying on him, and the awards are the same, Dawn's interests are invisibly ignored, and even sacrifices have to be made, and when things happen again and again, Dawn's efforts last year were killed under this kind of game, no wonder his heart is full of taste.
In Poly Gold, the selection of songs has always been the priority of O Dingyu, and the benefit is of course Jacky Cheung. Dawn also had to rely on Li Jin's status as a consultant at Jiayin Records to seek out. Li Jin has won many Japanese masterpieces for him, such as "Two Hearts Know", "I Love Ichiban", "I Wish I Was More Than a Friend", "I Will Be As Stupid as You" and so on.
Compared with Jacky Cheung's publicity expenses of 10 million to 20 million, Dawn's publicity expenses are only a few million. Why is the new disc named "Heaven and Earth Love", because the album 'That Day I Don't Want You' is hutchison's "Heaven and Earth Line" advertising song, and the advertising MV is called this name, so that you can "Wu Fan" production fees and end up with clean hands and feet.
In the awards, Dawn also has a sense of loss, the top ten Chinese, jingge golden song and the music scene, he only got one award, and finally won a "most popular male singer" award.
This is related to the fact that Dawn has revealed that he did not renew his contract, that time he and Polygon were very stiff, deeply aware that the company did not go all out for him to fight for the results he deserved, rumors that the original Polygram later reduced his exposure, and did not vigorously urge the new disc "Dream Castle", which was inferior to Andy Lau's "Love" and Xueyou's selected albums, and soon fell out of the IFPI list. Later, the "Love Shadow Drama" in the same album of The Valley of Urging Valley was rumored to be related to the high number of contract extensions.
Dawn cut his heart: "Ask the heart, I started on the first day of Polygram, the performance is quite ideal, basically everyone cooperates to do it, each does not owe each other, people have autonomy, I want to pursue a reassuring environment that I can concentrate on sprinting." ”
"Li Jin often told me that as a singer, it is best to only do my job, do not pay attention to the contract, and do not need to add unnecessary troubles to affect my work, so I will no longer express any opinions, and I hope not to attract unnecessary speculation." On the issue of dating Jiayin, he said: "I hope to understand that I am still a Poly Gold singer today, I don't want to lose my word, I don't want to affect my agent's appointment with Baoji, I still do my job as a singer." ”
丨 Yang Yongkang The "Red Bull Incident" record industry that was publicized afterwards was circulated in turn
The "stringer" Yang Yongkang in the recording industry. Regarding this person's other deeds, this article does not want to give examples, but only excerpts from the April 1996 "Ming Pao Weekly" section of his related affairs with Dawn.
We all know that Li Jin is Dawn's first agent, but who Yang Yongkang is, many people may not know, in fact, he is a good friend of Li Jin's acquaintance for more than twenty years, Li Jin helped him pay off his debts, and once served as Dawn's market manager in Poly Gold.
In fact, Yang Yongkang is not the first time to work for Poly Gold, his first record promotion work was in Baoji, but after about seven months, he quit because of "spontaneous action", which is also the main reason why he did not last long in several major record companies.
Back to Poly Gold, when looking for Liu Yuhua, Liu Yuhua asked him to help Leon (Dawn), and others such as Zheng Jiaying, Guan Shuyi, etc., at that time he was very grateful to Liu Yuhua, because there were superstars in hand, "waving" with people, the chess pieces were bigger, after all, he had been the general manager of BMG before, and now doing this position, there is always a gap.
In those days of 1994, Leon and Baoji signed a contract, he said: I am good, Leon is willing to go to Fei'e Mountain with me for two minutes, I told him my ideas, he after the analysis, and then Baoji, Li Jin three aspects of consultation, finally reached a signing agreement.
Left one Li Jin Left two treasures recordEd Jian Ning Right one treasure recorded Chen Ruxiong
Leon is a superstar, he will not easily trust people, because Li Jin helped, I can cooperate with him. He basically likes to win, and I like to win, and I made up my mind that I had to make Leon's performance better than before.
Sure enough, we swept the major podiums that year with the result of "That Day I Don't Want You", except for the wireless "Most Popular Male Singer" award. This, to this day, I think is an unfair thing, Leon worked hard, a highly anticipated award, and finally won by another singer.
That time, three days before the award ceremony, a group of our staff suddenly could not contact the wireless high-level, and experience told us that things were not good. Something must have happened. But there is only one prize, and if it is handed over to that one person, the other three people will be unhappy. In order to make all sides more comfortable, it may be necessary to sacrifice some people, and the situation will change due to the environment.
I believe, does an artist cooperate or not? What are the actual record sales? will be the reason for winning the prize.
However, when it comes to filming, you are willing to shoot me, why the sudden situation will occur, I have not figured it out to this day, and how to calm Leon's mood is our first thing to do, and at that time, we did not care about other issues.
After that, Li Jin and Leon suspended cooperation. What caused the pair to separate, except for the parties, no third party can know, and they never mentioned.
After leaving Leon, Lee joined Master Warner as a managing director, and he invited me to help out. At that time, I had been promoted to general manager, Liu Yuhua was good to me, Leon was good to me, and my future was unlimited.
Li Jin told me to go, and after two agitations, I pushed him too. Until the third time, because a group of old people from the Warner propaganda group who promised to stay suddenly left, the propaganda department appeared in a vacuum, and he was anxious for me to help, so I had to seriously consider staying, and I had to change my mind in a short period of time.
I struggled so much during those days, Leon knew it, and he told me to rest and asked if I could walk. I did promise him: I won't leave for a year! However, twenty years old friends have difficulties, repeatedly urging each other to save each other, the situation has changed, making it so difficult for me to do.
Leon once asked me: Is a one-year friendship really better than a twenty-year friendship? I think it's really not okay, I still owe Li Jin a favor. I'm gone, I'm paying it off, the debt is paid off, and I'll be more relaxed.
"Baoli Jin has many people, more than me is not much, less I am not a lot, Heavenly King Leon, not afraid of no one to help, Li Jin has no one to help." Good! I go. "How many people say I'm stupid about this, but who knows why."
One day at noon, the company will hold an important meeting to discuss the latest decisions. I didn't want to know too much about the meeting, and suddenly decided to submit my resignation letter to Liu Yuhua at eleven o'clock. As soon as I stepped out of the office, Leon's call arrived, and of course he wasn't happy, and I was overwhelmed.
I can say that I have been in the circle for many years, and the real sorry ones are Liu Yuhua and Leon. It was also after I left that I realized that Liu Yuhua needed me the most at that time, and he helped me when I was most frustrated. As for Leon, I was perfidious.
Later, Yang Yongkang entered Warner as the general manager, helping Aaron Kwok, and in 1995, Guo's achievements flourished in the four majors.
"I'll be clear, I've never betrayed Leon, despite knowing his job deployment. I have never engaged in sabotage, I have only spoken once, believe it or not! ”
丨 There is a boat ride after the bumps
On April 22, 1995, two music critics of commercial radio "Valley of Music" commented on the new song "The Love of My Life Is You", which was not praised. On April 26, Po Kee and Hutchison Telecom held a press conference. It has been commented that it was an organized and planned political propaganda show.
Because of the "Valley of Music" incident, the organizers had a tape and broadcast it on the spot for half an hour. Dawn, key members of the commercial station, Baoji high-level, a large group of reporters and so on listened in unison, and the scene was embarrassing. After listening to the show, the atmosphere took a sharp turn for the worse, first the composer Lin Mude angrily scolded that no one was qualified to criticize him except for Gu Jiahui's level, while Xiang Xuehuai, a senior executive and lyricist of Baoji, slammed the host of the program for being extreme and unreasonable and unfair...
Right one Lin Mude right two Chen Shanzhi
After Chen Shanzhi (Leon's second agent) took over the job, the first thing he did was to interview Baoji executives Chen Ruxiong and Jian Ning, hoping to stop this kind of aggressive action against the singer, and the response was: "In short, Poly Gold will cherish Dawn, you let him (the record sales supervisor) do it!" ”
Hutchison Was very dissatisfied, because Hutchison spent a lot of money to make the reception very loud, and it was hoped that the press would make a big report to help the momentum. Who expected that the next day's headlines were all about the controversy over the new song "The Love of My Life is You", and the "Heaven and Earth Line" was reduced to the second milk, no wonder Hutchison was furious.
Such a result also brought about the promotion of the new disc "Heaven and Earth Pride", attracting music critics to boycott, and some music critics also said dawn: this person is simply another in the mainstream!
At that time, CY Kong composed "Cross Angel" in the new disc, the style of music is fluttering and flexible, even if it is played now, it will not be out. When Dawn sang a solo song at the Waterfront in Central 2016, CYKong tweeted and sighed: If there is no Li Sheng, there may not be Yota Yamamoto! (He used the Japanese name for the album "Dream Tracking" in the same year to write a hit "Crisis Tracking", but this brick sold worse that year...) ）
Chen Shanzhi recalled: "At the annual Shangtai Lingqu Music Pop Chart Awards Ceremony, Leon, who won the bronze medal for male singers for four consecutive years, did not enter the top three, and only ranked among the top ten with "Dangerous Pursuit", and some record company colleagues cried tears, leon was able to calmly accept the results. But what about the Baoji propaganda director who insisted on fighting back? Shortly after the incident, he had switched to another record label! ”
Some people will ask, didn't the "most popular male singer" of wireless in 1995 get it back again? The answer is very simple, such a good result in 94 years, it is impossible that Poly Gold did not even strive for a "pacification award" in 95 years.
At least at the end of 95, Dawn's 26 solo singing proves that the popularity is still hot, and he is still the tree that can shake out big money.
In the atmosphere of "reinvigorating the majestic wind", "Perhaps" was born in 1996. Thanks to the addition of Ray Songde, who composed and supervised half of the album's songs, the album had a refreshing feeling. At the major awards ceremonies in 1996, "Deep Love Has Never Been Spoken" not only regained the scenery of 94 years, but also let Dawn win the gold medal for male singers in the music scene for the first time.
How did Ah San get to Ah Yi's place? At that time, there were also media sours. But no matter how the rules of the game are formulated, it can not stop the momentum of the second wave, 97 years is still this not very popular dawn sitting in this position, rather than being depressed and depressed, it is better to prove it: I am powerful!
Before the renewal expired in early 1998, Dawn and PolyGram once again sat at the negotiating table, this time the trend has gone, who has more chips, there is no need to say more. At this time, Bao Lijin also thought curiously that rookie Chen Xiaodong and Zheng Zhongji "pinched" Dawn could shake his position in the music scene...
Poly Gold Records is like a luxury wheel that has been open for too long, and the institution is redundant and old and does not want to make progress, "the gold and jade are outside, and the failure is in it." Eventually, 1999 sank into the self-absorbed merchant sea.
The protagonist of this article, Dawn, began another chapter of his life on March 23, 1998, along with rising upstart SONY Records.
"I've known about that game for a long time, and I've been through that angry phase for a long time, and if you take my joke and everyone listens to it and is happy, then I really don't care to be a "fool." I'm afraid that some people will embarrass the scene, but in the end, no one can laugh, that is really fooling themselves. "2009 Gentleman" (Boy Courage Recreates Dawn)