Of course, music is good or bad, an industry, short-term look at traffic, medium term look at works, long-term look at word of mouth.
"Your shallow smile is like plum sauce, I tasted the lipstick mint taste at the corner of your mouth", even friends who don't listen to songs should have been brainwashed by Li Ronghao's song "Plum Sauce" recently.
"Wumeizi Sauce" is from Li Ronghao's new album "Across the Seas" released in December last year, not recently released, and Li Ronghao performed this song on Zhejiang Satellite TV's New Year's Eve, but it did not bring fire to this song at that time.
It is worth noting that the five sue who just released a new album are also controversial because of "comprehensive shaking".
Whether it is a band that starts from an independent state to the mainstream market, or a high-quality singer-songwriter exported under the traditional pop music industry system, without exception, they have chosen to actively cater to the law of short video dissemination at the stage of creating new works.
While the release of the new work gained a large amount of traffic, both the five sue and Li Ronghao also encountered widespread doubts. Whether it is from the blunt criticism of music critics or from the public's comment on its "rottenness", there is an emotional existence of "anger and indisputability" behind it.
What does this say?
01
An ordinary and straightforward little sweet song
Yesterday, a number of topics related to Li Ronghao and "Wumeizi Sauce" appeared on the hot search, among which, #Ding Taisheng said that Wumeizi sauce is unbearable# The entry also quietly appeared on the hot search, and as of press time, the number of topics has reached 380 million times.
Ding Taisheng commented in the video that "Wumeizi Sauce" is unbearable, which is a work that caters to the literary backbone and migrant workers of small-town youth and junior high school graduates. He believes that Li Ronghao "has no sincerity, for the sake of the people to compromise into the soil", and many netizens agreed, indeed has been put on a bad compromise to the traffic era, entertaining the public while earning more.
According to the Baidu index, the search index of "Wumei Zi Sauce" began to rise on February 10, with a small peak on Valentine's Day on February 14, and then climbed further on February 18. This is because a group of music experts started covers on short videos, which led to the second creation before fermentation spread.
In the fast-food music world, as long as there is a lyric that catches the ears and brainwashes enough, it has the basic conditions to spread. The love theme expressed in the song also arouses public empathy, which young people are happy to express and show, coupled with the time node of Valentine's Day, driving the short video user cover spread, so it can quickly promote the release of this little sweet song in a relatively short period of time, and there are also cases in the front, similar to the advertising song "Super Idol's Smile" made by A-chan for Watsons.
Subsequently, the song around "Wumei Sauce" also diverged to such aspects as "How to eat Wumei sauce", "Looking for Plum Sauce Girl", Wumeizi Sauce makeup teaching, perfume evaluation, etc., as the song continues to ferment, short video creators can also find more fresh angles to rub traffic.
Up to now, "Wumei Zi Sauce" has been played more than 1.86 billion times on Douyin. On the music platform, this song also has the trend of slaughtering the charts. In the past week, "Wumei Zi Sauce" has appeared on the QQ Music Hot Song List, Hot Search List, and Pop Index List TOP1, occupying the TOP1 of the NetEase Cloud Music Hot Song List.
Interestingly, "Wumeizi Sauce" also cleared the ability to bring goods, and the search volume about Wumeizi sauce on Taobao increased by 843%, and many stores directly linked the product name to hot words such as "Li Ronghao" and "Wumeizi Sauce".
In addition to Ding Taisheng's outspoken criticism of this song, "Wumeizi Sauce" was also complained by many netizens about "rotten saliva song", "Is this really written by Li Ronghao?" ", "good soil", "vulgar is unbearable", Li Ronghao also encountered doubts, and received the evaluation of "loss of creative talent like a mudslide".
Before the new song was launched, Li Ronghao specially wrote a sentence for fans on his social media, saying: "Heal you with the beauty of the lyrics." ”
Judging from the feedback of the song "Wumei Zi Sauce", the melody and arrangement are considered to be intentional, Li Ronghao combines pop, rock and folk and other elements, with a concise and clear melody, a strong sense of rhythm to build, the song also uses guitar, piano and other instruments to strengthen the expression of emotions, making the whole song more vivid and interesting, it is difficult to forget after listening to it.
In fact, "Wumeizi Sauce" is an ordinary pop song that can relax people's mood, compared to many popular short video shouting and playing meme songs, this song at least meets the standards of record industry creation and production, but it is not so good. Coupled with the public opinion storm caused by the new album of the five not long ago, everyone began to feel collectively dissatisfied with the rotten end of the singer-songwriter.
02
Is the "heart" of the creative ghost still there?
Looking back at Li Ronghao's early growth background, we can appreciate the hard-won title of "creative genius" in the mainland music scene.
As a musician who has been working behind the scenes for a long time, Li Ronghao has also composed more than 200 songs for many well-known singers. In 2013, Li Ronghao moved from behind the scenes to the front of the stage and released his debut album "Model", which contains ten songs such as "Model" and "Li Bai".
When he created "Model", it was the most unsatisfactory stage of Li Ronghao's life, experiencing a car accident, losing his father at an early age, and being poor, and a series of blows made him fall to the bottom. And it was in a desperate situation that he analyzed himself, felt life, and lay dormant for ten years to create well-known works.
It was also with this album that Li Ronghao was shortlisted for five nominations for Best Chinese Male Singer, Best Newcomer, Best Album Producer, Best Chinese Album, and Best Lyricist at the 25th Golden Melody Awards in 2014, and finally won the "Best Newcomer Award", which is the first mainland singer to win this item.
Mainland musicians who won the Golden Melody Awards also included Mr. Miss, who won the "Best Singing Group Award" at the 28th Golden Melody Awards in 2017, and Cui Jian's "Best Chinese Male Singer Award" in 2022.
As the first mainland singer to appear at both Taipei Arena and Hong Kong's Hung Hom, Li Ronghao has also become a rising singer-songwriter in the mainland Chinese music scene. Although it cannot be compared with big brothers in the Chinese music scene such as Li Zongsheng, in a way, Li Ronghao represents one of the "faces" of mainland pop music creators.
In recent years, after leaving Warner Records and gradually getting his life on the right track, Li Ronghao began to focus on marketing, and had previously created three hot out-of-the-loop events.
On October 17, 2018, Li Ronghao's studio album "Ears" released by Warner Records included a single with only 4 seconds of "Babe", which set a record 4-second divine comedy quickly appeared on the hot search at that time and became a hot topic on the Internet.
On the second day of the release of the new song, "Babe" topped the new song chart of music players such as NetEase Cloud Music and QQ Music. Jokes about this song also poured out, successfully pushing the topic of "Li Ronghao's 4-second new song" on the Weibo hot search list. At that time, everyone was more collectively ridiculing the first 4-second "Babe", and even generally found this marketing method interesting.
On November 28, 2019, Li Ronghao angrily said on Weibo that the company would not let him post songs, he did not comply, publicly denounced the company and announced that he would not let him publish songs again, he found an electric vehicle maintenance forum and posted new songs by posting. (Review: Li Ronghao-style new song marketing is stretched thin Song Marketing Watch)
This news in the industry in addition to the discussion of the "song" issue, but also caused many netizens in the electric vehicle maintenance forum carnival, some people directly impersonated Li Ronghao in a maintenance forum post, the popularity continued to rise, "Li Ronghao want to be on the new song is so difficult" rushed to the hot search on the same day.
The next day, under the continuous marketing of "Almighty Personality", which arranged and produced the songwriting and singing of the album, "What Li Ronghao Can't Do" also ranked fourth on the Weibo hot search list, and Li Ronghao was affectionately called "Li All-round" by netizens.
Following the 4-second "Babe", on July 8, 2020, Li Ronghao quickly sparked heated discussions again for releasing a nine-character new song "What Do You Want Me Do", and appeared on Weibo. Unlike the previous "Babe", the duration of this song has reached 3 minutes and 29 seconds, but unexpectedly, the lyrics of the entire song are only nine words "huh, ha, what do you want me to do, what do you want".
In fact, Li Ronghao is a pop singer who understands the market very well. On Weibo, Li Ronghao once made the statement that "music is not good or bad", only "the difference between like or dislike", which caused a huge debate at the time.
With the explosion of "Plum Sauce", this topic has once again attracted everyone's attention. This may represent a common dilemma in the mainland music scene in the promotion of new songs, and no one wants to make their own songs without anyone listening.
03
Is music good or bad?
From the perspective of music finance, from the perspective of consumers, "music is certainly not good or bad".
In recent years, in the context of the epidemic, everyone's life is very difficult, in the general anxiety, decompression economic explosion, soil hi, shouting Mai-style venting and decompression short songs are widely circulated on the platform, in fact, there are also many independent music on the platform.
The shoddy Divine Comedy is like a gust of wind, quickly consumed and quickly forgotten.
Therefore, for consumers, music is indeed only liked and disliked, and there is no difference between good and bad. And professional music fans do not need to stand in a higher dimension of psychological superiority, to despise migrant workers, takeaway brothers, foot-washing girls and small-town youth listen to the Tuhi Divine Comedy, because of the educational resources and innate conditions you have, others may work hard all their lives, but still struggle in the whirlpool of life, it is difficult to have leisure, money and initiative to achieve a better aesthetic.
In the dimension of "empathy", the industry does not have to teach consumers a lesson with arrogance and accuse the public of aesthetics only worthy of eating "pig food". Ding Taisheng talked about catering to small-town youth in the video, and his original intention was not to be enemies of small-town youth and county youth, perhaps he just thought of where to say it, and was angry at Li Ronghao's choice to "take the initiative to sink".
In the current competitive environment of such "involution", the rules of the game of the entire copyright market are calculated according to the traffic share. The explosion of online content has indeed diluted the copyright share of the mainstream music market, and having a popular song online does help to increase the exposure and business resources of mainstream singers, and can also attract traffic to the box office of tours.
Therefore, from the background of "inner volume", it is difficult for us to criticize Li Ronghao for taking the initiative to choose "high and low" in creation to cater to the public. Just as Da Zhang Wei chose the Tuhi Divine Comedy "Xi Yao" back then, from music to entertainment, what he gained and what he lost, he knew in his heart, which is a choice of personal professional identity.
However, from an industry perspective, we believe that music is certainly good or bad.
If the core creators of the music industry collectively lose the "pride" that belongs to an industry, they all flock to choose to do brainwashing songs, "self-sinking" caters to vulgar taste, for a long time, for the industry, although the short-term has received traffic, the long-term will definitely be eaten back.
As Li Zongsheng said, "The responsibility for revitalizing Chinese pop songs is ours, not the media... Where is the power of our pop music? Is it that we all work together to earn money together, or can we really improve our overall strength? ”
Whether it is film, literature, painting or music, there are standards for judging merit, movies have Oscars and Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers, literature has Nobel Prizes and Contradiction Literature Awards, and even in the media industry, which is most chasing public attention and ratings, there are Pulitzer Prizes and radio and television journalism awards.
Although there has always been a gap between serious content and popular culture content, popular music, as the basic configuration that affects the spiritual life of the vast majority of people, certainly has advantages and disadvantages.
It is worth noting that yesterday, iQiyi's staff were forwarding a news that iQiyi achieved a full-year operating profit for the first time, and the number of members rose to 120 million, which is iQiyi's profit for four consecutive quarters. This means that while reducing costs and increasing efficiency, the platform is finding the right path to create content, serve the people, and truly drive video consumption.
At the beginning of 2023, whether it is the sci-fi movie "Flow Earth 2" and the anime movie "Deep Sea", or the online dramas "Crazy" and "Three-Body Problem", they have driven the collective pursuit of the public. This is because different from the stage of crazy chasing "traffic" in the process of frenzy in the past few years, the film and television industry began to de-traffic as a whole, paying more attention to the logic of the script, the acting skills of the actors, the shooting composition and even the quality of the soundtrack, and finally won the recognition of more consumers after returning to the quality of "volume".
Let's explore another controversial question - does composing songs for small-town youth and junior Chinese artists mean "unbearable"?
The answer, of course, is: no. Targeting a certain type of music consumer group for creation is a stage where the pop music industry will be considered at the A&R planning stage, and the criterion for judging "vulgarity" is still the song itself.
This year is a year of melees on tours, and the controversy over Li Ronghao in these two days will soon fade. But this may be a crossroads for the music industry to face mass consumers and glimpse the mood of the times - the public is also beginning to get tired of the divine comedy and traffic feeding, and they are beginning to long to hear the real "voice of the times" from the music industry.
This stage is a bit like the public's resistance and anger against the brainless "sweet pet drama" and "traffic drama" in the film and television industry in the previous two years. For singers and musicians who take the creative route, they may also pay attention to the backlash effect of this speculation.
Although the share of online playback is key, public popularity is very important, but the recognition of professional fans is also very important, the current music market is different from the previous era of the Divine Comedy that was monopolized by CRBT channels, traffic does not mean fans, nor does it mean that you will go to the scene to buy tickets.
An industry, look at traffic in the short term, look at works in the medium term, and look at word of mouth in the long term.
All in all, hit songs don't mean all garbage songs, golden songs usually come from pop hits and have stood the test of the times. Although music is indeed not good or bad, for the music industry, there must be good and bad, and the "heart" of an industry and creators may be in a thought.