Zhou Bichang has a habit: the 26-seat ticket in the 7th row of the concert, she usually does not sell.
This position was left to her 3 deceased friends.
Before every concert, Zhou Bichang always put a bouquet of flowers in this seat, she said: "I see this position as my connection point with their world, and this position is always reserved for thinking about them." ”
The reason why this position was chosen is from Zhou Bichang's birthday, July 26.
Over time, the 26 seats in the 7 rows have also become a link and tacit understanding between Zhou Bichang and the fans, and at the end of each concert, there will be something more in the position - sometimes a few letters written by fans to Zhou Bichang, sometimes a few bouquets of flowers.
From a certain point of view, the position that no one sat in at Zhou Bichang's concert is also like a microcosm of her position in the entertainment industry: not too close to the center, but always in touch with the entertainment industry.
In this position, Zhou Bichang sat for 16 years.
16 years after his debut, Zhou Bichang still has not mastered the "necessary skills" of being a female star - taking pictures and walking the red carpet.
In the entertainment industry, she describes herself as a contradictory person: on the one hand, she hopes that her music will be heard by more people, but she hates songs that are too popular. For example, in the year of her debut as "Supergirl Runner-up", the song "Notes" she launched was popular all over the country, but for this song, Zhou Bichang did not like it, because she felt that the song was "too drooling".
On the other hand, Zhou Bichang is a very stubborn person. For a long time, stubbornness became a roadblock in her career, and the desire for music always drove her forward, and this contradiction made Zhou Bichang experience several lows in her career: termination, snow hiding, and over-interpretation by the media. Yi Lijing once described her in an interview with Zhou Bichang as: "It's like being arranged in a game that pleases the public." Zhou Bichang did not deny this description, she said: "Yes, but at that time, I did not know that I was in the game and became a chess piece." "I've been contradicting myself in circles like this for so many years."
So far, Zhou Bichang's popularity has been called "a kind of metaphysics" in the entertainment industry. Although she has been debuting for many years, as a singer, Zhou Bichang's really popular works are not too many; and as a star, she rarely has a topic, and she is a rare guest on the hot search.
But it is such a girl who is extremely low-key in the entertainment industry, debuting in the talent show 16 years ago, and still has full popularity when she appears in front of the public.
Even Zhou Bichang himself did not think that 16 years ago, that four-month-long game would completely change the direction of his life. And the popularity brought by the superwoman title will actually continue to this day.
"Super Girl" appeared in the year of Zhou Bichang's life in 2005, when Zhou Bichang was 19 years old and was in his junior year at the Xinghai Conservatory of Music in Guangzhou. In the first half of that year, the school's hero was Jinsha, who was in her senior year, and this year, she sang the song "Summer Blown by the Wind" with Lin Junjie, which was all over the streets and video stores.
The popularity baton was quickly handed over to Zhou Bichang, who was one year younger than Jinsha. In the second half of that year, Zhou Bichang, who became popular with "Super Girl", became a prominent figure on campus.
Zhou Bichang participated in the "Super Girl" period (2005)
That edition of the "Super Girl" audition began in April 2005. The program team played the slogan of "singing when you want" and set up "five singing areas", with as many as 150,000 girls signing up, and the age range was stretched to 18-80 years old.
Looking back, rather than being a competition in 2005, Super Girl is a phenomenon: ordinary viewers have the right to vote for stars, and ordinary girls have fast tracks to overnight fame.
The hosts of that year's competition were Wang Han and Li Xiang, and the judges were 29-year-old He Jiong, who had just released his album Gardenia Blossom a year earlier.
He Jiong, who was a judge on 2005's "Super Girl"
In the competition, Zhou Bichang, who wears black-rimmed glasses, won the championship in Guangzhou with a recognizable singing style and entered the national finals, and even Ke Yimin, a judge known for his strictness, described Zhou Bichang as": "Saved the mainland music scene." In addition, it was also in this "Supergirl Competition" that the neutral style represented by Zhou Bichang and Li Yuchun began to be openly discussed. The sounds of "like" and "hate" are half of the time, and the focus of the debate is on the players.
Host Li Xiang and the top three of 2005 "Super Girl" from left to right: Zhang Liangying, Zhou Bichang, Li Yuchun
In addition to the style of the contestants, the format of the competition has also changed greatly, and the right to decide the contestants to stay is handed over to the mobile phone in the hands of the audience - a voting text message for one dollar, and each mobile phone number can vote up to 15 votes. On the night of the final, Zhou Bichang became the runner-up of the 2005 Supergirl with 3.27 million SMS votes, while the third runner-up Zhang Liangying had 1.35 million votes that year, while the champion Li Yuchun was 3.52 million.
Super Girl Final Night announces votes
On the stage of the final, a large piece of colored paper fell from the sky, and 20-year-old Zhou Bichang stood on the stage with flowers, she said: "Thank you to all the fans who supported me. This night has become an arc of Zhou Bichang's life, and it has also become a watershed. Before that, a simple and pure love for music was the reason to push her to the front of the stage, and after this night, her musical world became: "It is not enough to have simplicity."
So far, if you talk about your initial love for music, Zhou Bichang will probably owe it to his love for Jay Chou and Tao Zhe's music when he was a teenager. However, in the eyes of Zhou Bichang's father, his daughter's love for music is far earlier. In 1985, Zhou Bichang was born in Changsha into a musical family. Because several generations of her family are engaged in music-related careers and have long been aware of the dilemmas in the industry, so at the beginning, Zhou Bichang's parents did not want her to study music, they preferred zhou Bichang to become a writer - so they named her "Bichang".
Zhou Bichang in his infancy
However, the expectations of his parents did not guide Zhou Bichang's life path, and Zhou Bichang still showed his love for music. At the end of the 1980s, Zhou Bichang lived with his parents in Changsha, when his father always used to stand on the balcony after dinner, singing while eating, and the most sung song was the theme song of the TV series "The Tale of the Bandits in Wulong Mountain" that was played on TV at that time.
At that time, 4-year-old Zhou Bichang could always follow his father to completely and accurately hum the tune of the song, the father felt surprised, but did not pay too much attention, he attributed these more to Zhou Bichang's intelligence - after all, since childhood, because of good grades and well-behaved personality, Zhou Bichang has always been regarded as "someone else's child". At that time, Zhou Bichang's father would not have thought that most of his daughter's few rebellions were related to singing.
Zhou Bichang with his parents
After entering high school, Zhou Bichang's dress slowly became neutral, and she began to get used to cutting her hair very short, always wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses on her round face, and occasionally wearing her father's shirt to participate in singing competitions.
In the eyes of Zhou Bichang's parents, these changes happened almost overnight: the little girl who was keen on wearing a skirt in the past did not know when to start, suddenly became like a "tomboy", began to have more principles and reasons, and also began to be more stubborn and rebellious in some things. For example, singing.
When choosing a major after graduating from high school, Zhou Bichang insisted on applying for the Guangzhou Xinghai Conservatory of Music, even though her parents euphemistically proposed that music can be used as a hobby, but it is still prudent to choose a major, and she is still unmoved.
In the end, Zhou Bichang was admitted to Guangzhou Xinghai Conservatory of Music with a total score of 680 points and ranked third.
In the memory of Zhou Bichang's university teacher, Zhou Bichang would always appear in the recording studio with a baseball cap, and the brim of the hat, along with the sound, was pressed very low by Zhou Bichang. Because of this, when Zhou Bichang became popular because of the "Super Girl Voice", many of her classmates at the same level could not match the name "Zhou Bichang" with the specific people in the grade: "Because she is really too low-key." In 2005, 20-year-old Zhou Bichang participated in the second "Super Girl" held by Hunan Satellite TV and quickly became popular as the runner-up. Fame and distress strike with the same weight.
Super Girl Final Five in 2005
From left to right: Li Yuchun, He Jie, Zhou Bichang, Ji Dandi (formerly known as Ji Minjia), Zhang Liangying
For a long time after the competition, Zhou Bichang has been in a very awkward state, she said: "I did not expect that after becoming a singer, there are so many things to do in addition to singing. At that time, Zhou Bichang vaguely realized that perhaps the greater the fame, the more constraints and less self.
She once stood on the stage of the "Super Girl" competition and asked the judges on the stage: "For a singer, whether it is important to be popular or loyal to yourself." For this question, the judges in the audience at that time did not give a clear answer, perhaps for them, there was never a black and white event in the entertainment industry. But for Zhou Bichang, who stood at the entrance of the entertainment industry, this problem hovered back and forth above her head for a long time after that, and it was impossible to solve it.
Nowadays, people have long been accustomed to using "traffic" to describe the popularity of a star, and in 2005, when Zhou Bi became popular, the popularity of stars was more defined by "physical objects". For example, the size of the fan slogan when a star appears, the range of colors of the light sign when he appears on the stage, and how much he sells when he releases the album.
And Zhou Bichang is undoubtedly the person who defined "traffic" in that era.
In the years when Zhou Bichang's popularity was the most popular, she once managed to sell out all the concert tickets within 20 minutes without any publicity. Because of the high popularity, in the first few years of his debut, Zhou Bichang also starred in the movie "The 601st Phone" with Hu Ge and Cecilia Cheung as a heroine, and partnered with Chen Bailin to star in the movie "Who Moved My Strings".
In 2006, in the movie "The 601st Phone"
Hu Ge, 24, and Zhou Bichang, 21, are 21
Chen Bailin and Zhou Bichang in the movie "Who Moved My Strings"
Zhang Guoguo, the director of "The 601st Phone", once talked about the reason for inviting Zhou Bichang to star: "I always remember watching a competition in "Super Girl", and the state of Zhou Bichang on the stage - I don't like to talk, but there seems to be melancholy in my eyes. ”
Zhou Bichang once described herself as an "atypical girl". In the entertainment industry, she rarely socializes and rarely has news outside of her musical works. Even after 15 years of her debut, she appeared on the variety show "Spit Conference", and most of her groove points revolved around "not red". In this regard, Zhou Bichang said: "I'm sorry, because I am too focused on music, so there are no slots to provide materials for everyone over the years." ”
When he said this, Zhou Bichang had already been able to calmly face his "concentration" and "stubbornness" in life. But in the first few years of her debut, this pure and excessive pursuit was once the biggest obstacle in her career.
In 2005, four months after becoming famous, Zhou Bichang unilaterally announced the termination of his contract with the agency because of his different musical concepts. In order to explain to the public, Zhou Bichang published a self-described video on the Internet. In the 1-and-a-half-minute video, 20-year-old Zhou Bichang wears dark clothes.
Sit under a hanging painting and announce the announcement to the public that he has agreed to the contract and apologize to everyone. Finally, she said, "I love singing very much, and I'll keep singing." ”
The following year, Zhou Bichang signed a new company and released his first album, Who Moved My Strings.
The album sold well, and the company also formulated a detailed development direction for Zhou Bichang, but to everyone's surprise , Zhou Bichang terminated his contract again. To this end, Zhou Bichang paid up to 2.5 million yuan in compensation and a "snow hiding period" of up to 1 year.
Two consecutive termination storms have plunged Zhou Bichang into a storm of public opinion. For several months, in the news message about Zhou Bichang, words such as "difficult to engage" and "block" appeared frequently. For a year after that, Zhou Bichang did not have any job offers, and she cooked and listened to songs every day at her home in Shenzhen.
Occasionally, Zhou Bichang will also drill into a dead end, she does not understand why she just wants to terminate the contract, but to be hidden in the snow, she thinks repeatedly, when she is most anxious and depressed, she will even hammer the wall with her hands. At that time, she could not figure out the "rules of the game" in the entertainment industry, and she did not understand why it was so difficult to "break up peacefully" because of different concepts.
Later, Zhou Bichang, who was already relieved, said: "Now I can understand, after all, the company has also invested a lot of money on me." In 2013, Zhou Bichang signed a contract with a third company, the difference is that this time she set up her own studio as a "boss", this year, Zhou Bichang was 28 years old.
Looking back, it was from this period that Zhou Bichang began to care less about the market's repercussions and began to take the initiative to "become niche". In the 8th year of his debut, Zhou Bichang finally held the steering wheel of his career in his hands.
In 2015, a dozen days before Zhou Bichang's 30th birthday, she gave herself a birthday present — from Russia on an icebreaker to the North Pole.
On the boat, Zhou Bichang spent more than a dozen days without internet, in the middle of a white glacier, the whole world became extremely quiet, and when she was not on the deck, she would lie in her room, use a tablet to watch videos of wild animals, or listen to various lectures.
The 30-year-old also arrived during this period, on zhou bichang's lunar birthday, the crew prepared a small cake for her, and when they ate, everyone simply touched each other's cups, just like this, Zhou Bichang walked into his 30-year-old in the Arctic.
On the day of the 30th lunar birthday, Zhou Bichang posted a Weibo
After the age of 30, Zhou Bichang said that she suddenly felt that she could gradually play in the entertainment industry, describing the change as "like after 30 years of sleep, now the big cat is slowly turning into a lion." ”
In the past, from the perspective of Zhou Bichang's mother, in front of the camera, her daughter was always unable to express her thoughts completely. In the face of the questions thrown by the other party, the tone words represented by "uh" are the answers that Zhou Bichang frequently appears. And now, in the interview conversation, Zhou Bichang has become able to catch most of the questions thrown by the other party, and even if she can't catch it, she can also use her own unique humor to resolve it.
For Zhou Bichang, as she grew older, she found a balance between stubbornness and compromise. For example, in the past, Zhou Bichang said that her career would not appear pink, dance and lace, and now, these things have appeared in her concerts. And the black frame that had almost labeled her, she had also taken off.
But on the other hand, Zhou Bichang has drawn a clear line on his own compromise. For example, she once reworked her album Unlock when the release date of her album Unlock had already been set. She described herself as having a sudden outbreak of "irregular and unsuspecting obsessive-compulsive disorder", which emotionally made her feel sorry for the staff's efforts, but professionally, she felt that she was really unsatisfied with the album.
She said: "Maybe reworking it won't have much of an impact on album sales, but it will have a big impact on my life and my ideas." ”
This stubbornness is called by some people as "naïve that is incompatible with the entertainment industry", but his friend Yang Mi commented on Zhou Bichang: "If you don't have some childish things in your heart, how can you be an artist?" ”
Friend Yang Mi commented on Zhou Bichang
The acquaintance between Zhou Bichang and Yang Mi stemmed from a party organized by Qi Wei, in which Yang Mi invited Zhou Bichang to sing a song by Eason Chan's "Pompous", which took this as a starting point, and the two gradually became friends in the future. However, the acquaintance of the two people, in fact, has been buried in the dark line earlier.
Yang Mi and Zhou Bichang
In 2005, when "Super Girl" was all over the streets, 19-year-old Yang Mi was filming the TV series "Condor Heroes", and between filming, Yang Mi often wore a costume and squatted with the staff in front of the large TV set on the set to watch the "Super Girl" game.
At that time, her favorite contestant was Zhou Bichang on the 07th, and she also personally edited the text message and voted for Zhou Bichang. Later, Zhou Bichang, who knew about this matter, also jokingly said: "The reason why I did not become a champion was because Yang Mihuo was too late." "After all, she now has a hundred million followers."
In Yang Mi's eyes, Zhou Bichang is affectionate and true: "A very good friend worth making." Zhou Bichang called Yang Mi his only good friend in the entertainment industry.
In 2020, on the eve of the final of the variety show "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves" in which Zhou Bichang participated, Yang Mi also specially sent a Weibo to solicit votes for Zhou Bichang, Yang Mi said: "What I didn't do sixteen years ago, I grew up today, and I will guard your debut position." This year, Zhou Bichang was 35 years old.
This year, it is the 16th year of Zhou Bichang's debut. In the eyes of agent Xie Xin, in the years since his debut, Zhou Bichang has always been able to turn his "want to do" into "the best" in his work.
This may also be the charm of Zhou Bichang - in the Chinese music scene, a female singer who has debuted in the draft for 16 years has experienced some setbacks and ups and downs, but she can still have fresh vitality. From another point of view, this seems to corroborate why Zhou Bichang has always been able to have such a stable popularity in the entertainment industry. After all, the effort and sincerity of their own works are the most precious things in this era.
Looking back, the draft 16 years ago placed Zhou Bichang in the center of the entertainment industry overnight, and in the days since, she has begun to flee from that center continuously. Today, Zhou Bichang describes himself as a "marginal figure" in the entertainment industry: "Always wandering on the edge, no longer reaching the center of the entertainment industry." But on the other hand, Zhou Bichang never denied her efforts, she said: "Many people say that I have no quarrel with the world, in fact, if I do not argue, I will not still be in the public's sight now." ”
In 2020, Zhou Bichang appeared on the stage of "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves", the final scene, Zhou Bichang voted second in popularity, and finally formed a group, standing on the stage, Zhou Bichang held up the trophy and said: "Thank you to all the friends who have been voting, 16 years later, you are still the same stick." ”
Zhou Bichang in the final of "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves"
Offstage, the green sign that belonged to her was still flashing.
For example, 16 years ago, Zhou Bichang entered the show business circle with the second place result, and 16 years later, Zhou Bichang debuted in a group with the second place result.
The difference is that in the past, Zhou Bichang was a "chess piece", but now, Zhou Bichang has long become a "chess player".