The Chinese music scene has not declined, but everyone does not understand "good songs"

Text | Ling Hu Boguang

This platform's music variety show "Summer of the Band 3" (hereinafter referred to as "Lexia 3") has been broadcast for two episodes, but compared with the popular first season and the controversial second season, the third season is obviously not as popular as the first two seasons.

But I won't analyze it specifically here (mainly because the second episode was broadcast for a few days, the third episode was not broadcast, and the third episode broadcast This season may be basically finalized). I don't know if you have found it, even if there are two seasons of "Lexia" publicity and promotion, but the Chinese band still can't do the same fiery popularity as Mao Buyi, Hua Chenyu, and Xue Zhiqian.

This is not to mention the comparison with the Zhou King Tao Lin, Dao Lang and the Phoenix Legend.

When the three seasons of "Lexia" were broadcast, we also often saw barrages, commenting on which band sang foreign languages, too complicated and so on, and concluded that they couldn't catch fire, and the final popularity was rock like New Pants, and then Internet celebrity bands like Rejuvenation Dan.

This brings us to the question, Chinese audiences still don't like songs that are too complicated

"Lexia" has been done for three seasons, but the band is still not popular? Why

I think the musical aesthetics of Chinese listeners still stay at a relatively simple musical level. The main thing is that the composition is simple routine chords, with magical rhythms, and easy-to-understand but not vulgar lyrics, the singing style is clear, and the singing skills cannot be too good.

If the singer of a song is too good at singing, and the song song and arrangement are too complicated, we will often get the evaluation of "dazzling skills". The serious ones are those who don't go to the heart, those who don't have souls.

Music rhythm, arrangement and production are indeed inferior to lyrics and singing to the image for ordinary people who lack musical experience. Therefore, when evaluating music, ordinary people will more subconsciously start from whether the lyrics and singing are attentive.

I think that music and other types of music should be lyrics, music (melody and rhythm), arrangement (instrumental and arrangement), production (synthesis and mixing), singing (technique, emotion and harmony, etc.), which are very important.

Of course, because the music style is different, the expression of the song is completely different, and it is not a hard standard.

For example, mainland folk songs are typical of good melodies, easy-to-understand lyrics, and singers' distinctive singing. And this hip-hop is known to be the musician's breath combined with the rhythm of the music, arrangement, instrumental music and other aspects of production is not unimportant, but not too emphatic.

Why aren't Chinese bands popular? I think it's still too complicated for the Chinese audience.

For example, Chinese rock at that time, whether it was Cui Jian's rock music, even the Panther Band's hottest "Dont Break My Heart" arrangement was not complicated, the Tang Dynasty Band's "Dream Back to the Tang Dynasty" was not very popular from the public angle, and Wang Feng's rock was not the very complicated arrangement.

The Chinese public can accept orchestration, instrumental music and orchestra with complex production, and it is still a universal youth hostel. And also stayed on the first album, such as "Kill That Shijiazhuang Man" combined with realism, "100,000 Hippie" is also a relatively simple song, to "Big Stone Broken Chest" and other songs have reached the limit.

In Wan Qing's second album "Forest Road Travel in Southwest Hebei", the most popular songs are also the folk songs "Suburban Sleeping Temple" and "", and other songs with complex arrangements such as "Hebei Mo Qilin" and "Quarrying" are not very popular in the public sense, it is very out of the circle.

If you want to say that the other songs on this album are of poor quality, I definitely don't agree with them, and neither do fans and music circles. This is also why Chinese bands are not popular enough, and it is also a problem that the music style of the Chinese music scene has been revolving around.

King Tao Lin of Zhou has no heavenly king? It's a joke, really

Most Chinese-speaking listeners pay attention to melody, lyrics and distinctive style of singing (singing skills are not required), probably because of the long-standing relationship between Hong Kong and Taiwan ballet. The idea of arrangement, the use of instruments, synth-related timbre, singing breakthroughs and techniques in the song have been neglected for a long time.

At this time, there must be people scolding, ballet is just a collective term for lyrical songs, it is still an imported word, it is considered neutral. Ballet songs are not necessarily bad songs, but because the Chinese music market has always been ballet songs, the aesthetics of mainstream listeners do stay here.

Is music "good or bad"? Yes, just as music does aesthetic do need to be cultivated and accumulated.

This is actually an artistic aesthetic problem, which cannot be simply attributed to the point of "vulgarity". Just as we can evaluate the quality of a poem, music itself has its own laws in addition to personal preferences. Domestic evaluation of whether a song is good or not, usually is: he has a few songs out of the circle.

I accepted this statement a long time ago, but later found out that it was actually not quite right, and it was inappropriate to judge music by whether it was "out of the loop". Are we talking about "saliva song" good? It sounds really good! But saliva songs don't have any aesthetics.

Because the definition of "out of the circle" is very boomerang, "Learn to Cat Call" and "Thunder" can be said to be the most out of the circle, so what are their songs? So what kind of audience is the audience who listens to such songs?

Ordinary people will "instantly accept and reminisce" when faced with a "brainwashed" melody, and saliva songs are simply "magical". But those who have been trained in simple music or taught themselves know that people should not give in to their ears' preferences for sound, and we should pay more attention to musical feelings and inner resonance.

There is indeed a difference between aesthetics and taste, a person's age and experience increase, aesthetics will change, in a certain field of interest will also change, the taste of music is also the same, the music industry is a chain of contempt, most musicians in public do not admit that they despise other circles, but in private? Inside? It will still be.

This involves the question of aesthetics and taste, is there a situation of high and low, or the higher the more lonely? Most people like saliva songs, like digging and digging -

It does not mean that the musicality of this song is better, it is a higher level of aesthetics. Just as the deeper the books in the library, the less they are read, human beings can only resonate with what is within their own level of taste.

The aesthetic nature of the song may be related to the development of this country and the nation, and the Chinese system of traditional Chinese culture seems to lead us to be better at poetry, more advanced in aesthetics for poetry, more impulsive in creation, and the pronunciation habits of Chinese may also restrict our insensitivity to rhythm.

Another reason was also written before during the Dao Lang period, as of 2022, China's urbanization rate is 66.22%, the number of college graduates is more than 10 million, and China is not yet a developed country. At the education level, it is mainly knowledge education, and the investment in art aesthetic education such as music is insufficient.

At the same time, because the development relationship is "too rolled", and the public opinion environment leads to a very strict cultural atmosphere.

All these have led to the fact that the aesthetics of Chinese popular music are still stuck in the past, which used to be the official folk songs of the mainland, ethnic and local popular folk songs, and then to the rock pioneered by Cui Jian, and the folk songs of Gao Xiaosong to Song Fatzi. And commercial music is undoubtedly from Xu Guanjie to the four heavenly kings, Teresa Teng Luo Dayou to the Zhou King Taolin generations.

Of course, these musicians also have innovative musical styles, but at most they are at the level of folk songs, folk songs, Chinese style and pop rock. The rest is all urban ballet, or pop.

The aesthetic of Chinese popular music stays at the level of Zhou Wang Taolin's innovative RB, Chinese rap and new Chinese style.

The Chinese music scene has not declined, but everyone can't understand "good songs"

In fact, composition is the hardest part of music, and some people will definitely refute it. The simplest truth is that language education is the most basic education, as long as it conforms to the rhythm, you can change the lyrics of a song at will. But music, like painting and sculpture, requires training.

It is difficult for ordinary people to change the tune of a song, and they don't even understand what the song is.

There are songs to have songs, at the beginning Hong Kong's local composition all relied on a handful of cow people, cow people retired their own composition instantly collapsed, Japanese song cover Because into the Internet era, young people are more likely to have access to the original song and original song, naturally will fan the original song can not fan you these covers.

The first sentence I saw in the music industry was: words are not important, music is the soul.

I don't quite agree with it, Chinese classical music classics are used to sing poetry, just look at the music is the Western standard, picking up people's teeth will never be able to do them. However, in the Chinese music scene, it is not okay to only emphasize words and not songs, only to brainwashing songs and rhythms, and not to pay attention to the breakthrough of melodic rhythm, the breakthrough of arrangement and production, including the breakthrough of singing style.

The problem in the mainstream music scene now is that the lyrics are not good, and the saliva songs such as "Wumei Zichan" and "Love Like Fire" dominate the list.

Some people will definitely think that I am listening to those complex songs, not ha, now there is a too heavy arrangement and production in the Chinese music scene, rather than the drawbacks of the composition itself, the singer has no work to pull out the classic old songs and rearrange them, and arrange them into rock, hip-hop, blues, beautiful name tribute.

Or a song learned a half-tone from the West or Japan, and the arrangement and production were complicated. But the music is ordinary, the timbre and arrangement are very chaotic, the lyrics and singing are even more bullshit, and the surface is neat, but it is not necessarily good music.

Internet celebrities who add sound cards, engage in sound correction and messy sound effects, not to mention.

Can the Chinese music scene be "great again"? No, it's better than before

At present, the biggest problem in the Chinese music scene is the combination of these two, low-quality ballet songs are flooded, and the public is still listening to the Divine Comedy.

More complex songs may not be all good, in fact, the first two seasons of "Lexia" are still more typical, the first season of rock and newcomer Jiulian real people are indeed bright (new pants, pain in the circle fans are regarded as "dirt"), but pain and new pants are already acceptable band rock.

The five people in the second season, the new band Fulu Shou, and the white paper are typical Chinese new bands (Super Chop and Mandarin are obviously niche ones), and the champion reinvention is obviously an upgraded version of Mandarin, a more professional and powerful English band (the style of the latter friends is not niche)

I think that with the current Chinese public's musical aesthetics, singing foreign languages must still be niche, if it is limited to Chinese bands, the universal youth hostel is still typical. If you can accept songs such as "Hebei Mo Qilin" and "Quarrying", then look for songs with different musical styles, levels, and aesthetics according to this standard.

Excluding foreign languages here, what nuclear, dead gold, etc. are really niche, you will find that the current Chinese music scene has not declined at all, on the contrary, it is more than ten times richer than the previous Hong Kong and Taiwan music scene POP period.