11 years of "contracting" the cutting-edge "The Voice" in the music industry, why is it difficult to recreate the "top stream"?
Author| Akagi bottle
Edit| Mia
The "Voice of China" (hereinafter referred to as "The Voice"), which has gradually lost its presence in the public eye, has once again come to the cusp.
On August 25, Zhejiang Satellite TV announced that "The Voice of China" was temporarily suspended. There has been too much discussion around the script of "The Voice", the right of mentors to turn around, etc., what we want to talk about more is, as a music talent variety show that has been empty, is "The Voice", whose star-making ability is increasingly "unable to keep up"? Entertainment Unicorn counts the previous champions and subsequent development paths of "The Voice" in the past 11 years. It was observed that in addition to a few champion trainees and popular trainees who followed up steadily, more players, including several champions, spun around the Cangatic variety show, and then silently disappeared from the public eye.
The 2020 The Voice champion Shan Yichun is a champion with a high volume in recent years, and he is also one of the few champion students who did not sign Mengxiang Qiangyin, which made the outside world say that he "can't keep his own champion". Two years after the end of the show, Shan Yi also recently won the award for Newcomer of the Year on the Wave List.
Under the weakening of the star-making ability, the decrease in the gold content of the champion status, and the chain reaction of the series so far, why is it difficult for "The Voice" to create a champion with a name in the music industry like Liang Bo and Zhang Bichen? With the collapse of the public's trust in the "selection" of talent shows, under the mass effect of the continuous increase of the internal entertainment and the reality of everyone's love, where will the future talent content go?
Champions are marginalized, and it is difficult for good voices to make stars?
Tashi Pingcuo, Xing Hanming, Wu Keyue, Liang Yuying, the names of these singers alone, most audiences will feel strange. This is also the general perception of the public for the show "The Voice" in recent years: the performance of the program is mediocre, and there are very few topics that really trigger discussion in the public circle; It is difficult to make stars, even if there are several champions of the season as described above, it is difficult to remember names.
It can be seen that among the previous champions, Liang Bo, Zhang Bichen and Shan Yichun are basically the three relatively high in public recognition. Low-key champion Liang Bo chose to further study music after the end, and made a stunning return in 2017 with a song "Boy" on "The Singer"; Zhang Bichen, a former member of the Korean girl group, directly transformed into a vocal singer because he won the championship in "The Voice", sang major well-known film and television OSTs, and sang the theme song "Cage" for the movie "Disappearing Her" this year; Purely Yi was only 19 years old when he participated in the show, and after winning the championship, he continued to contract with theatrical films, and released his debut album and won the Newcomer Music Award 2 years later. But this is only a few gratifying champions follow-up development path, more other champion trainees' career paths at the end of the show, most of them are beautiful after a short bloom, around the same development path such as getting involved in the film and television industry, singing OST, and participating in the Canghe Galaxy music mix. There may be personal choices involved, but the feedback to the market is particularly obvious: no one knows the champions selected, let alone the other players?
This is not the case. What is more ironic is that the subsequent development of the popular students of the show is often more optimistic than that of the champion students, and even created some embarrassing famous scenes. For example, Zhou Shen, who was eliminated 16 into 4 in "The Voice" in 2014, and Jiang Dunhao, the champion student of the class of 2016, met in "Creation Camp 2021", with the former as a mentor and the latter as a player. For example, in the class of 2013's "The Voice", the mentor Na Yingli guaranteed trainee Xuan Xuan (Dai Xuanxuan), causing Yao Beina to leave the scene regretfully, causing public opinion, and Xuan Xuan, who finally won the third place in the show, also quickly disappeared from the public eye.
It cannot be denied that there have indeed been many popular players on the stage of "The Voice", and the subsequent career development has continued to rise. For example, Zhou Shen, Zhang Bichen, Wu Mochou, Jike Junyi, Jin Zhiwen, Yuan Weiya and other students are still resident on various music charts. But more often, after the program is broadcast, a large number of high-quality singers cannot continue the popularity and exposure after the game.
"The Voice", as the top talent genre in the Chinese music scene, quickly showed its two sides. On the one hand, it has indeed injected fresh blood into the Chinese music scene. Entertainment unicorn statistics found that the previous champions basically won the New Human Music Award or were successfully shortlisted in the same year or two years after winning the championship. A considerable number of them have also appeared on the stage of "The Singer", which has a high threshold, as permanent or kicking guests.
Taking singers like Zhang Bichen who focus on singing as an example, after winning the "Voice" championship in 2014, her song "Between Kisses" won the 22nd Oriental Billboard Annual Top Ten Golden Melody Award, and the following year, won the 14th Huading Awards Chinese Most Popular New Singer of the Year Award, in 2016, "Year Ring" won the 23rd Oriental Billboard Annual Top Ten Golden Songs, and she herself won the Best Annual Leap Award and the National Choice Female Singer Award. Simple, also won the first Wave Music Awards of the Year two years after winning the championship. On the other hand, as the show progresses, the sense of existence of the champion gradually decreases, and you can also feel that the aesthetics of the instructor and the main trainees of the program are deviating from the aesthetics of the public.
As a very long-lived variety show, the novelty and change of "The Voice" is fed back to the public level, and it is more about the freshness brought by the new mentors and formats every season. As a voice talent variety show, "The Voice" gradually lost its star-making color. The difficulty of making stars is the "common disease" of talent variety shows in recent years, but compared with other talent shows, the answer of "The Voice" to the market is somewhat opposite, the champion will also "have no name", and the popular students have the corresponding circle support, which may be "star-making bias".
Variety shows, not talking about dreams
The first impression of "The Voice" to the audience is to give the audience the dream of "amateur fame overnight". When an amateur contestant who is not even from a music school, stands on the stage, uses his voice to gain the recognition of a mentor who has a voice in the music industry, and gets the opportunity to continue to create music and the stage together. Sometimes, what is more exciting than the performance of the contestants themselves is the tears of parents or relatives in the viewing room. But similar stories have been playing out for eleven years, and it is difficult for the audience not to tire of it.
In fact, for a long time, variety shows such as "The Voice" have not only been the debut stage of amateurs, but also the "re-debut" and transformation of tepid powerful singers. For example, in 2013 and 2014, singer-songwriter Ai Yiliang, who had won the Taiwan Golden Melody Award, participated in two voice talent shows, "China's Strongest Voice" and "The Voice of China" after coming to the mainland. For example, in 2013, Zhang Bichen was a member of the Korean debut girl group before winning the championship of "The Voice".
But a few years after the broadcast of "The Voice", the general environment has changed, so that unknown powerful singers "debut" and amateur singers have more choices to become famous overnight, compared with stardom and stage art highs, it is obviously easier to choose to get a part of the audience through the Internet. This is why many new variety shows have emerged this year around the stage and personality attitude narrative of young people, such as "Youth Plan", "Stage 2023", etc., and most of the contestants are from Internet platforms, and they are interesting young people with their own audience groups.
On the other hand, with the development of online social channels, under the efficient "deep into the industry" methods such as watching a few live broadcasts and gaining a basket of industry insiders, the public's trust in talent shows is falling off a cliff. At a certain time in "The Voice", mentor Wang Feng loved to ask students after the first stage, "What is your dream?" The experiences of the trainees were also questioned about writing the script for the show. A series of shady scenes made the word "dream" appear playful on the stage of "The Voice". At the beginning of the first season, the current champion Liang Bo revealed after the game that the show had a script.
In this context, entertainment unicorns believe that it is better to talk less about dreams and look at strength in the variety show.
Another proposition worth exploring is: after the melee of the music complex in the past few years, why is there a draft variety show with a format like "The Voice" that can be seen through at a glance, instead of "The Singer" that directly moved the head singer immortal to fight?
As a variety show that also purchased mature copyrights, the quality of "The Singer" and the influence of the singers of each season at that time were obvious to the industry, and for the main quality of the music complex, the audience naturally wanted to see more presentation than growth. The main reason for the suspension is the huge impact of online variety shows, the huge impact of the N generation of TV variety around innovation, and as the program progresses, the content supply becomes more and more difficult, the selection of suitable mature singers becomes more and more difficult, and the controversy brought by the format, etc., after all, music itself has no quantifiable judging standards. On the other hand, "The Voice", which has been steadily produced for many years, has continued to gain the favor of sponsors for many years. However, with the current situation that in recent years, the level of mentors has not decreased, but it is becoming more and more difficult for students to get out of the circle. It also allows the industry to see that although the growth narrative in the talent show has a corresponding audience, overly entertaining, cookie-cutter storytelling, and framing will only bring accelerated aesthetic fatigue.
From the perspective of the market, "The Voice", which has not been reshuffled by the industry, has temporarily left the public eye because of various insiders. The fate of "The Voice" after the suspension is to be determined, but the talent variety show of domestic entertainment will meet more scrutiny, and it will inevitably bring wake-up call to the producers.