Shang Wenjie, why don't you fight?

New Weekly

2024-05-31 11:08Published on the official account of Guangdong New Weekly

Shang Wenjie is more like a special symbol in the entertainment industry, and she is mixed with the values worth discussing in this era: a supergirl champion who blurs the boundaries between grassroots and elite; a singer-songwriter who deviates from the label of a popular idol and runs towards niche electronic music; An ultimate I person who always keeps a distance from the circle and lives in his own spiritual world......

In the recent variety show, she is known for her cold and rational, showing a rare softness and sensibility, and the New Weekly reporter interviewed Shang Wenjie and chatted with her about her "change" and "unchanged", "no sound" and "echo".

Author | Xie Wuji

Edit | Su Wei

Title Picture | Photo courtesy of the interviewee

"Shang Wenjie seems to have changed."

This may be the biggest change in the impression of Shang Wenjie in the public opinion field. The recent "Riding the Wind 2024" (hereinafter referred to as "Sister Lang") is like a small window, through the window, we see all kinds of contrasts presented in the show, and many stereotypes have quietly changed:

Shang Wenjie, who seems to have a cold temperament and is not close to anyone, will have a heart-to-heart relationship with her teammates, talk about her feelings about suffering from bipolar disorder, and rarely cry in front of the camera because of the elimination of her teammate Xirui; seems to be a strong appearance that does everything, but also has a straightforward and clumsy side, baking a toaster in the kitchen, using a knife to split the avocado and the flesh in half, and grabbing the Menglan doll with Zhu Dan's son during the live broadcast......

Shang Wenjie is very contrasting in the show, and was laughed at by netizens as "kitchen killer Shang Wujie". (Photo/Riding the Wind 2024)

"That's what I usually do in private. I also burned many pots in my house. I don't usually cook by myself, and the food I cook is unpalatable, and I am a novice in life. My requirements and conditions are not high, as long as I can make a living. ”

At the beginning of the interview, Shang Wenjie's relaxation and honesty overturned many of my preconceived notions. On that day, she was preparing for her fifth performance. Talking about this show, at first she had the rationality of forming a group, but she was obviously overwhelmed by her sensibility.

"What it gave me, it made up a lot in other ways. I don't usually have much chance to make friends in the circle, but I really made a few very good friends in private in the show. I think it's nice to see some of the good stages. ”

Shang Wenjie is more like a special symbol in the entertainment industry, and she is mixed with the values worth discussing in this era: a supergirl champion who blurs the boundaries between grassroots and elite; a singer-songwriter who deviates from the label of a popular idol and runs towards niche electronic music; An ultimate I person who always keeps a distance from the circle and lives in his own spiritual world; An idealist trapped by his family of origin and combines low self-esteem and self-confidence.

Because of this, the emotional bits and pieces revealed in the show are particularly rare in Shang Wenjie, who has always been dominated by a high degree of rationality. She once compared herself to a hedgehog, and she seemed to gradually smooth out her prickly fur in front of everyone, revealing the softness inside.

"Build to Destroy"

"If you can't return to the peak of the year, will it be a problem for you?"

"It doesn't bother at all. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be back to where I was when I was at the top, it's a given. She barely hesitated for a second in response to this seemingly sharp question.

In the summer of 18 years ago, Shang Wenjie won the Super Girl Championship with the highest number of votes in draft history with 5 million votes.

The audience remembered the "cold" champion rarely seen on the screen. From counterattacks all the way to repeated PK, she is always expressionless and indifferent. Even on the night of the final battle, she was still in her own world, quietly singing Karen Mok's "Love", it seems that since she stepped into the entertainment industry, her "cold feeling" has never changed.

Shang Wenjie was at the supergirl scene in 06, and since then she has given people a "cold" image. (Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee)

At that time, Shang Wenjie was given the synonym of "intellectual" and "white-collar". In terms of the music market at that time, she was an artist with "social significance above commercial value" in the eyes of the company, and Fudan's high education and elite white-collar background broke the grassroots label of Supergirl's first year.

Many people don't know that behind the silence is often a "volcano" that needs to erupt.

The real Shang Wenjie is not as "indisputable" as the media said at the time, let alone from the rumored "Shanghai elite family": she grew up in an alley, her family conditions are ordinary, her parents divorced early, and the small house of 9.8 square meters framed almost her entire childhood. In high school, Shang Wenjie had to rely on the school's bursary to pay for tuition. Until she was in her 20s, her dream was to own a house of her own.

The sudden pinnacle of life, for Shang Wenjie, is a "snap of the fingers" of fate, and she always recalls it with fear that is better than joy, describing that time as "trembling".

"I feel quite scared to see the peak of the year now, it is a very dangerous state, it can cause a lot of things to get lost, and people make a lot of wrong choices in the moment."

The idol halo concocted by the market pushed her into the glitzy vanity fair, and she was twisted like a "marionette" at the mercy of others. Every time she sings a popular love song that caters to the taste of the public like "I Think I Am Your Woman" on stage, the 4 minutes and 28 seconds are a long ordeal for her.

Shang Wenjie was initially packaged as a petty bourgeois love singer, but she herself did not like this route. (Photo/Album cover)

More than ten years later, there is such a contrasting picture in her memories: when she first arrived at Beijing Airport in 2006, there were more than 1,000 fans who came to pick up the airport, and they squeezed out of the terminal at the risk of their shoes being trampled off; In just three years, she has experienced signings, failed transformations, bleak careers, and being unemployed at home, and she has watched other younger artists go through it all.

The competitive spirit and introspective mentality of the school bully from childhood to adulthood made Shang Wenjie give herself an ultimatum in 2008, before the trough of her career: "If you don't create, get out of this circle!" If you don't sing your own songs, you're not qualified to stand on stage! "

Leaving the popular love song route is Shang Wenjie's most determined thing, she has been listening to electronic music since she was a child, and the Gorillaz Virtual Orchestra and Michael Jackson are her musical initiations. At that time, electronic music was still a niche market in the domestic music market.

Rationality and emotion are mixed together, and Shang Wenjie re-finds her own coordinates.

"I first wrote songs with instant noodles on the side, sloppy, maybe I didn't change my clothes for three days, and I was bored at home. Listening to music and hearing the whole person enter a trance, I began to write. I hummed the melody, turned on the recording function of the old-fashioned phone, and recorded directly. ”

2012's "Last Hymn" not only established Shang Wenjie's identity as an electronic singer-songwriter, but also injected a new trend into the mainstream at that time with her experimental spirit and avant-garde consciousness. (Photo/Album cover)

Like a "volcanic eruption", the obsession and obsession with music, the confusion and transcendence of the self accumulated over the years, were vented in the creation of that time.

Thus, we can feel a temperament that is both fragile and strong in her early experimental electronic music, which is a battlefield that only she can see: in "Undercurrent", "Look, I have a silver knife stuck in my back", and in "Build, to Destroy", "I am building, and I am constantly destroying, just to break free from this bondage".

"I talked to Confident for a long time,

Hopefully it can work harder than inferiority."

In 2013, Shang Wenjie returned to the stage of Hunan Satellite TV. This time it was "I Am a Singer", and she reintroduced herself to everyone: "I am the original electronic singer-songwriter Shang Wenjie. ”

She later mentioned that scene to her teammates in Sister Lang, saying that she still remembers the lights that night and the expressions of the audience in the front row: "I may remember that scene until I am 80 years old." I was almost mushy by then, and I was about to roll up and leave. ”

Shang Wenjie's first introduction on the stage of "I Am a Singer" has a new identity. (Picture/video screenshot)

That year's "I Am a Singer" brought Shang Wenjie back to the public eye, which was a turning point in her career in the eyes of outsiders. For her, this is a "reunion with old friends after a long absence", and it is also a "battlefield" for self-reinvention, leaving many performances that will be talked about by music fans in the future.

What's more, Shang Wenjie, as a pioneer electronic music singer-songwriter, personally overthrew the supergirl champion "Shang Wenjie" 7 years ago.

Her creative path has always been digging inward and living in the spiritual world. 14 years have passed, and Shang Wenjie, who doesn't want to sing "I Think I'm Your Woman", still can't reconcile with herself in singing.

On the stage, she is just the right amount of simplicity and indifference, which seems to symbolize the rebirth of a butterfly like a cocoon. Before that, she was surrounded by the sound of controversy that attracted attention with fancy dress.

In the eyes of the outside world, Shang Wenjie is so "off the rails" that she is simply "out of the way"; But in her view, this is an exploration of avant-garde music and art, and it is also a process of finding oneself to attract the public's attention to her style to music.

"Instead of making some false hype, it's better to explore how this kind of music should be expressed, even if the shape is controversial, but I think it's the right shape. That's how I put it into words. ”

Unfortunately, the controversy caused by her bizarre dress is much higher than the discussion and acceptance of her works.

Shang Wenjie's bizarre attire is a visual expression of her response to the creation of electronic music. (Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee)

Refusing to cater to the market's experimental electronic music, and naturally overlapping with the cold, alienated, and rational image left for music fans, Shang Wenjie is like an "outlier" who can't integrate into the mainstream, and uses extremely vigorous and real power to clash with stereotypes. In an interview, when talking about "pioneer", her interpretation was tingling - "The edge is the edge of the blade, and it is to pass the edge of the knife".

However, the core of strong self-confidence is also Shang Wenjie's usual "weapon". Behind the sharpness, she maintains an unknown side, a vulnerable and inferior side.

"I've always doubted my worth and ability, and I've been battling my inferiority. I talked to Zixin for a long time, hoping that it could work harder than inferiority, without too many worries and fears, and be more relaxed to work. ”

Low self-esteem and self-confidence constitute two sides of the same body in the background of her personality. Shanghai Lane is a small society, poverty and the experience of divorce of her parents, which made Shang Wenjie grow up in a strange eye mixed with pity and contempt. Her unsociable, inferior, and withdrawn personality gave her the nickname "alien".

She later thought that doing her best in her studies and devoting herself to her career was actually to fill the huge vacancy in her childhood.

is accustomed to the warmth and coldness of the world, and in the face of the ups and downs of public opinion, Shang Wenjie always has a hard and cold sense of honor and disgrace. She terminated her contract with her previous record label and wrote a line with the EP of "Dream Pontoon" - "Silent man, speak loudly with music".

Shang Wenjie prefers to remain silent and speak with her works in response to the controversy from the outside world. (Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee)

The "silent" attitude of Shanghainese people has become popular with "Flowers". Shang Wenjie often doesn't sound:

"I remember when I was a child, my grandfather taught me not to make a noise about many things, not to squeak, and too much expression will give people a very immature and unwise feeling."

"There are some misunderstandings, and the real motive may be that the other party is more willing to see the result of being misunderstood, so let him see that result."

In the era when traffic is king, "black and red" has even become an explicit traffic route, but Shang Wenjie prefers to remain silent and keep her distance, and transform the emotions accumulated in her heart into her own creations.

When she stood on the stage of "I Am a Singer", she left behind a few original electronic music works that were talked about by music fans and music critics, such as "Love Warrior Battle" and "Final Faith", and then appeared as a judge on the stage of the "Sound into the Heart" bel canto boy group competition, bringing the works of "Imagination" and "Deer Be Free" to the audience. It took more than ten years before it was slowly accepted, understood, and appreciated.

On April 8, 2012, Shang Wenjie won the Best Electronic and Dance Singer Award at the 12th Music Billboard for her album. (Photo/Album cover)

In an interview, when asked what to do if others can't understand your songs, her face naturally showed firmness: "I believe that my songs belong to the future, even if they are niche, they will still be liked." ”

Not long ago, she wrote a small essay on Weibo for her new album, mentioning the 8 years of constant denial and rejection, and turned out the song that had been suppressed for 8 years: "Just like that sentence, what was taken away by winter, will come back in spring." ”

Perhaps these are her "no sounds" and "reverberations".

"Shang Wenjie will affect the entertainment industry"

"A lot of people don't dare to come and talk to me at first, but if you take the initiative, you'll find out that I'm a second-hand. People I know think I'm like a husky, with a wolf face, but I'm actually a second-hand. ”

Shang Wenjie's profile picture on social media is also a husky.

More than ten years after her debut, 41-year-old Shang Wenjie is still looking for reconciliation with herself and the world. She has become more emotional and open-minded. In the face of this world, the original brute force of "rampage" has now been transformed into a self-consistent resilience.

41-year-old Shang Wenjie has learned to accept her inferiority complex and stubbornness, and has learned to reconcile with herself. (Photo/Shang Wenjie Weibo)

On variety shows, she usually "sings" and finds an outlet to express herself.

In the program "Praise for the Song", someone asked the question that singers often encounter - should they make music they like or music that caters to the market?

Shang Wenjie's answer is very honest, and she admits that she has compromised with the market in recent years: out of a very ambivalent mentality, although she takes the route of a niche singer-songwriter, she also needs to be responsible for more expression and listening.

"Now I still have a basic understanding of making music, and there are two directions: either make music that you are happy with, then don't expect any splash in the current market, and accept the result if you choose to do it; Or just try to write some music that is relatively more in line with the market out of practical considerations. My ideal goal is to use the music that I earn money to support the music and the whole team that doesn't make money. ”

She said that she had passed the age when she was too willful and tangled, and she was more able to let go of herself and others. The EDM album released last year, with elements of electronic dance music, was already a sort of way for her to compromise the market.

Shang Wenjie has never lacked the courage to break through her comfort zone and has been making new attempts. (Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee)

In the eyes of some, this "change" is a sign of gradually closing the edges and corners and reconciling with the circle; But for Shang Wenjie, "change" is the continuous exploration of the boundaries of creation itself.

"I used to do some niche music, and I think I've done it very well, but everyone thinks it's outlierative; Now make some commercial songs, people think that you are not compromising, but it is a challenge for me. Still can't stay where it was. ”

She is wary of a certain inertia, accustomed to breaking out of her comfort zone again and again, and actively placing herself in a high-pressure unfamiliar environment.

Some people once said that Shang Wenjie's limbs were uncoordinated and she sang "Don't raise your hands" on stage, so that for a long time afterward, she was inferior to the expressiveness of her limbs, and the voices of the outside world could not break free and tightly imprisoned her.

And this time in the show, Shang Wenjie socialized with other sisters more freely, lived together, tried to sing and dance out of the competitive spirit of fighting inferiority, and achieved a breakthrough more peacefully.

Social fear I people like her, and she also won the championship in the talk show "Listen to Sister". On the talk show stage, she is like a cold-faced smiler, sincerely facing her flaws and laughing at herself sincerely, which is her most powerful weapon. In order to find material for her talk show performance, she even ran to ask her friends every day what her shortcomings were, and for the first time, she felt the ease and happiness of "discovering her fault".

Shang Wenjie laughed at herself in the talk show "Listen to My Sister". (Picture/video screenshot)

In the story of interacting with other sisters, she is an existence who is good at discovering the shining points of others - in her description, Guo Biting is more relaxed and self-consistent than she imagined, gentle on the outside but strong on the inside; Zhu Dan seems to be very arrogant, but he is delicate and wise...... Perhaps it was others who released the long-lost warmth and sincerity to her, so that the hedgehog in her heart slowly put away the prickly hairs and revealed a soft undertone.

Now Shang Wenjie's background color of being cold on the outside and hot on the inside is seen by more and more people, and the strong sense of contrast in variety shows makes her relationship with the secular circle seem to have eased a lot, and the distance between her and the mainstream of the public seems to be gradually narrowing.

However, she still feels that she is a bit "dead-eyed", not worldly enough, and keeps a certain distance from the circle: "I am more like a student with little social experience in this circle, which is unfortunate and fortunate - fortunately, it is relatively simple and not so tired; Unfortunately, I missed a lot of opportunities because of this. ”

Shang Wenjie likes Menglan dolls the most, she is still a person who lives a simple life and does not want to go with the flow. (Photo/Photo provided by the interviewee)

On the night of the Supergirl Battle 18 years ago, as a top student of the French Department of Fudan University, Shang Wenjie thanked her mentor Professor Cai Huaixin, who was invited to the competition. After the game, a reporter asked him, "Will the entertainment industry affect Shang Wenjie", and the teacher's answer was very certain: "The entertainment industry will not affect Shang Wenjie, Shang Wenjie will affect the entertainment industry." ”

When I talked to Shang Wenjie about this, she smiled and said, "I forgot that the teacher said this." If he had said it, he might have foreseen my peculiarity in this circle, but there is nothing wrong with this statement, it is more than a result. The meaning for me is what kind of attitude to work in this industry, and it is my attitude not to be changed by the entertainment industry. ”

"Have you ever worried that one day everyone won't remember Shang Wenjie, and no one will listen to the songs she sends?"

The final answer seems to confirm her pessimistic idealistic temperament - what has changed is her mentality, and what has not changed is the attitude of being true to herself and keeping a distance from the world.

"I'm conflicted. I want people to remember my songs, not me. The biggest sense of panic is that one day I don't have the motivation and passion to continue creating, and then it may all be over. Because as you get older, you will find that you are not full of enthusiasm all the time, and you will have doubts about the driving force. I'm scared of this time. ”

Proofreading: Encounter; Operations: Lu Zirui; Typesetting: Chen Yi

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