The first time I listened to Shao Shuai was in the middle of a sleepless night.
When I can't sleep, I habitually open NetEase Cloud Music to listen to private FM, and the first song is "Written to Huang Huai".
When I first listened, I only remembered the slightly hoarse male voice, and after listening to it several times with three points of good feeling and seven points of curiosity, I unconsciously was brought in by the emotions contained in the song.
It may be that it is particularly sensitive in the middle of the night, and with the repeated cycle of music, the memories that were originally buried in the heart of the teens and twenties are flashbacks like movie pictures, and it is inevitable that there will be some emotion.
It was also then that I began to pay attention to him. Looping through each of his songs in The Cloud Village single and looking through the song reviews, I found that there are many people like me who are attracted to his simple but gripping music.
But what I didn't expect was that Shao Shuai was actually a college student born in 1998. Why is this young man always able to sing our stories with his music and sing them into our hearts?
01.
A song written to Huang Huai suddenly became popular with NetEase Cloud Music
You are my dream of gain and loss,
I am a dispensable person
After all, this arrow that crosses the mountains and rivers,
The stabbers are all people who cause illness with emotion.
——Xie Shuai, "Written to Huang Huai"
Shao Shuai, formerly known as Shao Shuai, was born in February 1998 in Zhoukou, Henan Province, a student of Huanghuai College, in his early 20s. Unlike voices that are full of vicissitudes, it's hard to relate the boy in front of you who still has a bit of school spirit on his face to his music with a story.
His story with music begins with his first guitar in high school.
The years of high school preparation were boring, two points and one line, brushing up on exams, and music became a stabilizer for his mood. Listening to songs, humming songs, and then finding classmates to piece together a few hundred dollars, finally had the first guitar in my life. The guitar popped out the first sound, Shao Shuai seemed to be enchanted, and since then he has liked to play the piano and sing and create uncontrollably, and the seeds of music have been planted in his heart.
But Shao Shuai clearly knew that in the small county where he grew up, playing music was a life path that was not understood and could not be recognized. The family did not support it, and the guitar obtained by the "crowdfunding" was almost smashed by his mother, and pleaded again and again to stay.
He did not regard music composition as his only way out, and most of the time, he tried to compromise with life, study well, and chose the school of economics and management that was considered more promising when he applied for college.
At the end of August 2018, he released the Demo version of "Written to Huang Huai" to NetEase Cloud Music. Yuncun is a gathering place for folk music lovers, and popular original folk songs such as "Chengdu", "Can You", "I Have Been" and so on are all fired from here.
He said that this song is "a dream of his own", and being able to make the song and release it is already an account for himself.
Although the Demo version of "Written to Huang Huai" is slightly green in singing skills, the music that cannot be hidden is full of emotions that are about to overflow. As the song sings, "A song written to Huang Huai late at night, you are the love I can't express in words", there are only two references to Huang Huai in the lyrics, but each sentence sings about the attachment to Huang Huai.
At the beginning, the popularity of this song was not high, but it was circulated among the students of Huanghuai College, and the new students punched in the school, and the old senior looked back on the past. With the role of Yuncun's personalized recommendation, slowly the song was recommended to more folk music lovers, and it also caused more resonance, and the heat came up.
In November 2018, "Written to Huang Huai" suddenly became the song that soared on the NetEase Cloud Music Soaring Chart for several days, and the number of comments also rose wildly.
The moment he learned that the song became popular, Shao Shuai was suddenly confused, looking at the private message comment of "99+", accidentally the mobile phone was not held, and "snapped" and fell to the ground at once. He had thought he would be so ordinary, but now, the seed of music had broken ground.
Everyone is wondering, who is Huang Huai, who makes people suffer from gains and losses? Who was that cute and gentle Minnan girl, and what happened to it?
He read through the comments and private messages below the Demo version, and finally replied, "Don't ask me who Huang Huai is." Huang Huai may be a person, may be a place, or may be some kind of sustenance in his heart. ...... It is the softest place in your heart. It does not matter to any specific person or thing. ”
At the beginning of 2019, Shao Shuai re-recorded "Written to Huang Huai" in the recording studio, this version of the musical mood is more clever, he will be more comments in the experience into the song, there are the feelings of the protagonist of the story, but also the calm of the onlookers, and now the comments have approached 100,000.
At first hearing the song, you don't know the meaning of the song, and then listen to the person in the song, you can always be unconsciously brought into the melody of "Written to Huang Huai" full of stories, think of your alma mater, think of the first love, those you are lovely and unattainable, never forget, is your Huang Huai.
02.
From the "Unknown Generation" to the 740,000 "Villagers" who are concerned about the new folk songs
We are not nameless people,
We know who our last name is.
Sad things to smile at the face,
The spring of the little people can be experienced by themselves.
——Xie Shuai, "The Unknown Generation"
The first song became popular, giving a high enough starting point to understand The Sorrowful Shao Shuai, although he was happy and excited, he also had uneasiness and wandering.
Shao Shuai did not systematically study music, in his words, "all rubbed." In high school, relying on the seven hundred yuan received by his classmates, he followed a teacher who opened a piano shop to learn twelve guitar lessons, touched some doorways, and later met strong people, so he went up to "rub and learn some".
Without the professional knowledge of the class, Shao Shuai used to make up for it with diligence. From the second semester of his freshman year, Shao Shuai basically stationed himself in the music studio provided to him by the school and started a business. He has never worked hard with outsiders, but his time in the studio is getting longer and longer. Pondering his own works, writing songs and lyrics, he had almost no campus life except for classes, could not participate in group activities, and "seemed to have become a person who jumped out of the three realms."
When he is free, he will habitually open NetEase Cloud Music, listen to music, open a live broadcast, and send dynamics. New song tours, song scores, creative life, lottery interactions are all daily routines of his personal homepage, and more often, he will open the comment area and carefully read each carefully written comment.
He likes the atmosphere in the comment area very much, because people will always write some stories that they usually dare not say and cannot tell into the comments of NetEase Cloud Music, and behind each comment is a story that turns thousands of times.
Later, he wrote a song called "The Listener's Story", inspired by the story of the fans, the songwriter column, he persistently wrote: to relieve the worries of Shao Shuai's listeners.
Ten o'clock in the evening is the best time for him to create. The long night is long and uninterrupted, light a lamp to warm a cup of tea, thinking also becomes emotional, and it is common to write until two o'clock in the morning when inspiration flashes. In the days of staying up late to create, Shao Shuai wrote ten new songs and made his first album, and the fans rose to 740,000, but his biological clock also reversed, and he couldn't sleep until two o'clock in the morning.
He is used to finding inspiration from life, and his music mostly tells the stories of ordinary people.
He once wondered why so many people like to listen to him, who was "an ordinary person who can no longer be ordinary, and wrote ordinary songs that can no longer be ordinary". After reading many private messages and comments, he gradually understood that because he and his audience were just like ordinary people, lonely and nameless but experiencing ups and downs. Struggling and twisting in the bustling city, sad things are faced with laughter, and in his songs, we feel the same way.
Because of this, he always wants his songs to become a warm comfort for everyone. He once said, "I hope that my song can also be like Du Kang, relieve your sorrows, but not hurt your body."
Although many songs are written when he is most uncomfortable, he will also add some positive emotions to the lyrics as much as possible, telling himself to be good and that tomorrow will be better, so after listening to it a few times, he can still have a little sweetness and some positive meaning in the aftertaste.
In the song review area of NetEase Cloud Music, "How to relieve worries, only Shao Shuai", this fan's evaluation of him will always receive high praise.
03.
When it comes to music, there's still a long way to go
There are many stories,
How long the future can be.
——Xie Shuai, "South Wind North Lane"
After entering 2019, the growth of Shao Shuai has suddenly accelerated.
In April, Shao Shuai's first original album "Relief" was officially released, which soon broke through the NetEase Cloud Music 999+ reviews.
In the month of the release of his first album, his first national tour of his life, "Relief of Worries", was also opened with the support of NetEase Cloud Music's "Stone Project".
Previously, folk musicians such as Xie Chunhua, Mu Xiaoya, and Meng Fanming have all gained more exposure and fans through the program.
In this four-month tour, starting from the starting point of Huanghuai College, Shao Shuai traveled from north to south through 24 cities to bring songs and happiness to fans.
From the enthusiastic reactions of the fans on the spot, he understood that making music would be something he would stick to for the rest of his life. More and more fans pay attention to Shao Shuai, listen to his music, and ask him when he will come to tour his city.
In May, Shao Shuai officially signed a contract with the S.A.G Stage Art Working Group. With a professional production team, he can focus more on his music.
In June, Shao Shuai released his first single "Warm Cup of Tea" after signing a contract, and the producer was his idol, S.A.G. Jiang Beisheng. In order to hear the new song for the first time, many fans choose to stay on the sidelines, and at the same time that the zero point song is released, a large wave of comments are also sent out at the same time, and the comments are quickly over 10,000.
Brushing the comments that kept jumping out, he had some feelings, and some touches, it was difficult to sleep, at 1:30 a.m., he couldn't help but leave a message, "People who live in Cloud Village, listen to the song and go to bed, good night and good dreams."
In July, August and September, during the tour, Shao Shuai did not forget to create, and the frequency of a new song every month gave freshness to old fans and attracted more new fans into the pit.
Fans leave him a message with his song:
We can open "The Story of the Audience" in "One Man's City", "Warm a Cup of Tea", "South Wind and North Alley", recall "The Years Of the College Entrance Examination" in "Rainy Hangzhou", those "Expired Youth", and "Teenagers Are Still There". Once, I "Wrote to Huang Huai" and told him "You are all my dreams", just like in "Zhumadian West", I told you "You are an April day on earth".
Time back to a year ago, "Written to Huang Huai" has just been released, and Shao Shuai's fans in NetEase Cloud Music are only single digits. Spring to autumn, this year, he created 20 songs, each song entered the official list of NetEase Cloud Music, a total of more than 1600 times, "Written to Huang Huai" played more than 400 million times, the national tour sold out, the number of fans also rose to 740,000.
Time seems to pass very slowly, and his efforts can correspond to each specific day; time seems to pass quickly, and many people cannot reach his achievements in ten years.
In October, Forbes China released the 2019 under 30 elite list, only 21 years old he entered the list as a singer, he used music to give strength to many people, and now more people will hear his songs.
It is certain that Shao Shuai's story about music has just begun, and his future is still very long.