Text/Han Songluo (Writer, Film Critic)
If Zhao Yi's sentence "There are talented people in the Jiangshan generation, each leading the way for hundreds of years" is slightly modified, it can also be used to describe the current situation of online music and wildfire spring wind.
Chen Keyu's "Strange Words" is one of the most popular and trend-leading online songs in the past two years, and this song has quickly become popular since its release on Douyin in December 2018, so far, it has received 2.945 million likes, 95,000 comments, and has been used as a dubbing by 5.52 million videos.
▲ Chen Keyu and "Strange Characters" on Douyin.
Chen Keyu also took this song with him, appeared on "Happy Base Camp" and Jiangsu Satellite TV Spring Festival Gala, and gained a large number of fans in Douyin, NetEase Cloud, Weibo and other places, and he had 2.04 million fans in Douyin alone.
His later new songs have also won a lot of attention, "Until I Met You, I Only Like You" and "The Best After 8090", which received 220,000 and 500,000 likes respectively.
▲ Chen Keyu sang "Strange Words" in "Happy Base Camp".
The reason for the popularity of "Strange Words" is not complicated, its tune is catchy, the rhythm is bright, and the use of strange words in the Chinese as the focus of writing, which coincides with the current trend of knowledge economy and the trend of the rise of national culture. Of course, there is another reason, because it was released on Douyin, participated in the "Echo Project" of Douyin, stood out in this event, and obtained the blessing of platform power.
Of course, the singer himself can continue to fire, but also depends on professionalism, the accumulation of works, and the continuous emotional ignition of the audience. This is more important than a pop.
Before becoming famous, Chen Keyu grew up in Suzhou, completed his studies at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music, and then returned to his hometown to do a wedding company for a long time, and was honed by the complicated business of the wedding company.
After becoming famous, he remained humble and patient, and still regarded the dialogue with the audience as the most important part of his musical career. Therefore, people who have been in contact with him and seen his scene will use "Nice" to describe him when they mention him on Weibo.
This is an important reason why Chen Keyu can still maintain his popularity after "Strange Words".
A year ago, I witnessed the frenzied forwarding of "Strange Words" in the circle of friends, and I also saw Chen Keyu's live performance. In the middle of last month, I interviewed Chen Keyu, once again learned about his story, and also felt this warmth and humility.
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Chen Keyu grew up in Suzhou, his parents were businessmen, doing the clothing business.
Chen Keyu's father liked to sing, but in his growing up, he did not have the opportunity to learn music, and later, he found that his son liked to sing, so he decided to find an opportunity to send his son to learn music.
When Chen Keyu was in the fifth grade of primary school, his parents took him to a banquet, mentioned his son to the guests, said that his son sang very well, and asked his son to go on stage to show it, Chen Keyu stood up, his parents pulled him to the stage, and he sang a song "Wait for a Thousand Years". There was a music teacher on the scene, who said that this child sang very well, it was better to learn it.
▲ Chen Keyu posted a photo of himself when he was five years old in Douyin.
Chen Keyu learned the art from his teacher, began to formally study music, began to learn bel canto, and later found that he liked pop more, so he transferred to pop.
Chen Keyu university studied at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music, which once trained Li Yuchun, He Jie, Wei Chen, Tan Weiwei, Wang Zhengliang and other superwomen and fast men. After Chen Keyu entered Chuanyin, he began to participate in various competitions. At that time, the "happy male voice", like many singing competition variety shows, would purposefully go to some schools to select seedlings, once went to Chuanyin to find Chen Keyu, invited him to participate, he went to Chengdu and Hangzhou before and after, but even the audition did not pass.
When he was about to graduate, he had already started to do a wedding company, and he had also participated in the fast male selection, and had been to Chengdu, Hangzhou and Changsha, and was also eliminated in the audition stage.
▲ 15-year-old Chen Keyu.
After going to several divisions to participate in the competition, it seems that Chen Keyu is a very positive and confident person, but in fact, he is also like many people, inferiority and self-confidence alternate, self-confidence and inferiority back and forth. That's what prompted him to work as a wedding company, and it was also the reason why he later posted songs on the Internet.
He was praised from a young age, began to learn music in his youth, began to write songs in his third year of high school, and was admitted to Sichuan Yin, he was confident; but in the school, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, people with special skills abounded, often there were "kind of very front-looking, very radiant classmates", he felt that he could not sing others, instrumental music was not outstanding, and he was inferior.
He rented a house outside the school, communicated less with his classmates, and never gave them the songs he wrote, "I think everyone is very good anyway, and there is no need to listen to these things." 」 ”
Therefore, when Chen Keyu became popular because of "Strange Words", his college classmates began to send messages, "They said, you tell me the truth, the song is not bought by you, write your name, I said no, really I wrote it, but they said they didn't know you would write a song." I said just I didn't say. ”
▲ 25-year-old Chen Keyu.
Doing a wedding company, the product of this alternating mentality of inferiority and self-confidence: "I feel that I am not a leader in school, and I did not expect to say that I was going to drift north or where to go, the school was not drifting well, at that time I felt that then I would forget it and come back to do business." In the process of doing business, I did not enter the KTV for a year, nor did I sing. Because I think I just forgot about this thing, I may not be able to get along with me in the future. ”
Therefore, when he was doing social practice in his senior year, he first went to the wedding company for a month, and then he did the practice, and then he thought, it is better to open a wedding company by himself. For this wedding company, Chen Keyu's parents stopped their clothing business and began to help their son do the company. This family wedding company, counting Mom and Dad, there are five or six people.
Although the wedding company is small, it is complete, helping customers plan weddings, arranging wedding scenes, emcees, makeup, photography, videography, etc., usually asking people to help, "if the personnel really can't get together, I will also go on stage to do emcee." Communicating with customers requires Chen Keyu to do it himself. In short, one person is a team.
▲ Chen Keyu took a photo in a special feature of Douyin, restoring his wedding career scene
For the customers of the wedding company, marriage is a big deal, and many people come with the desire to marry only once in their lives, so the requirements are both numerous and demanding. Some customers, at twelve o'clock at night, want him to go to his home to communicate the plan, some customers, hope that the budget of 100,000 yuan, make the effect of 300,000 yuan, add a lifting platform, to appear like a princess, and the choreography must reach the level of the concert.
The wedding company has thus become a difficult ordeal, "every day when I wake up, I have to return more than an hour of information in bed before I can get up and go to work", because people are contacting the wedding at the end of the day, it is useless to go to work during the day, and the messages are sent at night.
Even so, Chen Keyu's wedding company did not make much money, "maybe as my mother said, I am less suitable for business, others mention the discount I agree, make a little more guest money, sleep at night, it feels like a pit people, the next day to make up for the east and west, do not make money." ”
In those years of running a wedding company, he held hundreds of weddings.
The reason why Chen Keyu did his best to do this wedding company was because his musical dream had sprouted again, and he needed money to make songs.
Although the opportunity to sing is less, but the written songs are still there, he thought, it is better to record these songs, put them in his car to listen, as if to complete his dream.
At first, he was looking for someone to do songs and arrangers on Taobao, "it was very cheap, because there was really no money", and later, the situation was slightly better, "just find a more than ten thousand, twenty thousand yuan or so."
Where does the money come from? Do the wedding profits. The budget of a wedding in Suzhou, divided into wedding companies, is three to fifty thousand, a wedding of thirty thousand yuan, in order to earn thousands of dollars, often a wedding profit, not enough to do a song, "to do several, and then may support a song."
He said that he used to be a very grumpy person, but after the wedding, his temper became better and better, "I think it's not easy, so sometimes I will think about it." Like the one who asked him to talk about the plan at twelve o'clock at night, he finally accepted it, because making music is very expensive, "Go, at least I can make a song."
At first, the songs that were made were just played in the car and sung at the wedding scene. Later, a recording engineer said that as long as you spend 300 yuan, you can upload to QQ music, which is also considered a release film.
He did so, his debut solo music EP "Positive and Negative", his first solo music album "True · "Routines" are all released in this way. At first, there were very few people listening, and there were eight or ten comments, "I just thought that there were ten eights, and then I slowly went down, and so I slowly began to write songs."
This is 2015.
▲ Chen Keyu's first solo music EP "Positive and Negative".
This situation lasted for three or four years, during which time he released thirty songs, including "Strange Words", which was first released on November 14, 2017, and since then, he has repeated this song, hoping to attract people's attention, just in Douyin, he has sent it more than twenty times, without moving, each time only a few hundred thousand plays, at most only ten thousand times.
Before that turning point, his less than 10,000 followers were accumulated by his own pet videos, and the videos of cats and dogs he initially posted received hundreds of thousands of likes, but after he began to appear on camera, there were only two or three likes. ”
The turning point is because Douyin's "Echo Project" and "Echo Project" invited Zhang Shaohan as the judge of the event, and Zhang Shaohan was Chen Keyu's "only idol".
▲ "Send a video of cats and dogs, more than a hundred thousand likes, send yourself, two or three likes." ”
After doing a wedding, Chen Keyu saw the activity of Douyin, and the most exciting place about the activity copy was that if he participated in the activity, if the film was good, Zhang Shaohan would give the contestants a thumbs up. He shot two songs for two consecutive days and posted them, and on the third day, he shot "Strange Words" and posted them.
The next morning, he saw the 36,000 likes he received for his work, and by the time he got to the company, it had increased to 100,000. Fifteen days later, he was on Happy Base Camp.
Chen Keyu's songs are different from the songs of young singers of the same era, many young musicians will write some ethereal emotions, but his songs will have a real idea.
He believes that this is because when he was studying, the language was better, but it was not the kind of literary talent, "so the words I write are generally more lifelike, and then I hope that everyone can feel some things, including I can see a certain event, hear a certain story, I think it may produce my inspiration, or I see a certain plot or how, the inspiration often comes from those." ”
The inspiration for "Strange Words" came from this way, he saw that there were many people on Weibo who were using those words, and thought, it is better to use this idea to write a song. At that time, he did not expect the song to become popular, but instead thought that the strange words were a very small point, and only hoped that "it would be helpful to students." ”
▲ Chen Keyu in the performance.
Compared with other singers, he has experience, the degree of social involvement is relatively deep, the song is more realistic, there is more observation of reality, and the capture of hot phenomena is also more timely, "How is it fat", "The best 8090", "1-10 confessional body", "Wandering Zi Yin", "Ant" all have these characteristics, which is a reason why his songs can become popular.
With such characteristics, he also has more opportunities to cooperate with film and television companies. He once worked with Huayi, but Huayi wants him to do film and television performances, and he prefers to do music, if he really wants to have a relationship with film and television dramas, he hopes to sing the theme song of the TV series.
He also once had a film and television drama performance, that is, the vertical short film "The Director Got Down on Me", which premiered on May 6, 2019, directed by Li Yafei and starring Liu Beishi and Tong Gua. Chen Keyu made cameo appearances in three of the episodes, playing the role of Lin Catcher, who is a "person who has no judgment ability, and he will arrest whomever others ask him to arrest, and he has no autonomy, but he pretends to be very serious."
To be fair, Chen Keyu acted well, his lines, voice, and eyes were very comfortable, unlike the first time he was photogenic.
But for Chen Keyu, the most difficult part of the first acting is the first line, followed by the position of the scene. During the actual shooting, he forgot to walk and speak his lines, because it was Pomegranate Sister Yuan Qiongdan who played against him, and when he saw people in the movie and television appear in front of him, he couldn't help but be fascinated, so that he forgot the words, until Sister Pomegranate reminded him.
After the performance, Sister Pomegranate asked him what he was doing? He said she was singing, she said what song do you sing? He sang "Strange Words", and Sister Pomegranate said that she knew the song, "You have nerves, don't sing to act." Good songs don't sing up for acting. This sentence left a deep impression on Chen Keyu and also made him firm in his belief in continuing to make music.
▲ Chen Keyu's headhunter appearance.
He has a clear understanding of this:
"I will be more comfortable in singing, and I will be more restrained when acting", "I think I don't have acting skills, why do I have to act it?" I have not studied professional acting, I think it is purely because you were still traffic at that time, there was a little bit of popularity, and then you went to play this thing, and you don't like this thing in your heart, why do you go to engage in it? ...... I'm on the scene, and I always feel that it has nothing to do with me", "Instead of making money to act, I think it's better to stay at home, then make less money, and do a good job of music at home." Yes, do what matters most to you. ”
However, even when making music, there are many jobs that are not pure enough. After becoming popular, he performed a lot, the performance places are various, he signed a contract for a nightclub performance before becoming popular, and he had to finish, although he did not like nightclub performances, but in order to fulfill the contract, it took a while to run more than a dozen times until the end.
▲ After a year of popularity, he gained a large number of fans.
However, there are also many interesting things in the course of various performances. Once on the stage, I found that the first three rows were full of children and parents, so I asked what was going on, and one of the children said that because he liked "Strange Words", he called the whole class.
▲ On November 7, in the "I want to be better - Douyin and ta friends" sharing plan Jiangsu station, Chen Keyu shared his own story.
In contrast, it is much easier to sing songs in Douyin, and he is also very willing to make the audience of Douyin happy, and when he sent "Ants", he specially made ant costumes, dressed as ants, and sang "Fiery Sarilang", his parents went to the hula hoop with him.
At the most popular time for face-changing, he also posted photos of himself from the age of five, and predicted that "there will be a surprise at the end" - it is his female appearance.
With the popularity of the track, Chen Keyu did not leave Suzhou and go to Beijing or Shanghai. He hopes that he can have more songs with a degree of singing, the song is not red, for him, it is not important, "the song is red, people are called superstars, I can have a song red is not bad, this mentality I think it is still necessary to put it well." ”
He is satisfied: "It's the job I aspire to, and the music I yearn for, and then I can do what I love to do." It's actually quite good. ”
As for the wedding company, after the popularity of "Strange Words", he "cut the wedding company in the first instant, sold it at a low price at the first time, and sold at a loss." ”
▲At the scene of the performance.
"I told my friends that there were more than 1 million goods in the warehouse, and then I paid the warehouse rent for ten months to 170,000 yuan, and the store rent for ten months. I said you will give as much as you think is appropriate, they directly cut me to 300,000, I said OK, give it to you, I will do as they want, if they say 100,000 I will give, 200,000 I also give. Then all the computer equipment and everything was given to him, and the decoration was all given to him. ”
"In the future, if there is a movie or TV series, please play a wedding company owner, will you act?"
"It's horrible, I don't want to go back."
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