Following 2014's "Midnight Theatre", Wang Ruolin once again launched a new cover album "The Call of Love" in the past 2019. In the solo albums released in recent years, Wang Ruolin is sometimes romantic and free, sometimes eccentric, and this time in the cover works, she has always been good at presenting contradictions in music, which has brought another sad and innocent look.
Not long ago, a reporter from the Beijing News met Wang Ruolin in Beijing, and she said that because she has always been fascinated by the classic love songs of the 60s and 80s of the last century, no matter how many years have passed, every time she listens to it, she can strongly feel the dramatic love-hate feelings of the female characters in the songs. As a result, she re-explored the classic works of singers such as Teresa Teng, Meikong Skylark, and Weng Qianyu, and the concept of an album that gathered different female characters came into being.
【Song Selection Criteria】 See if they are sad enough to be dark
Beijing News: The album contains a total of 11 tracks, three of which are different language versions of the same song. Was choosing a song for this album a tangled or difficult process?
Ruolin Wang: The more troublesome part of choosing songs at the beginning is the copyright issue, because many songs are very old, so it takes some time to confirm the copyright. In addition, each piece of music is not sad enough to be dark, enough to make me feel. For example, like "Lover", "Cold Rain Song" or "Apple Blossom", these stories still have that kind of poignant feminine color, "Naihe" although it sounds very happy, but the sense of helplessness in it is also quite tasteful, or there will be a desperate side.
Beijing News: The album focuses on the style of Japanese singing, why didn't it go directly to Japan to record, but chose to go to Portland, usa?
Ruolin Wang: I have always been interested in the genre of singing, but the songs selected on the album are no longer the original pure songs. At that time, I also considered going to Japan or Hong Kong, China, but if I really recorded it in the traditional way of the 1970s and 1980s, it seemed to me a little bit tied up. Then I went to ask a great music teacher I knew in the United States, we worked together many times, he was actually interested in this kind of work and concept, but because he was busy with other albums, he introduced me to a music producer named Chris Funk, so we worked together smoothly.
Beijing News: There are a variety of alien cartoon creatures in the album cover and you wearing a space suit, and the key words of the album such as "woman" and "poignant" do not seem to match, so the specific design concept of the cover is?
Ruolin Wang: In fact, for me, the two are matched, and after I saw this work, I felt as if a person was in that chaotic world, and only she herself silently knew that there was a direction, a very romantic state. Cover designer Brandon Graham is an American sci-fi cartoonist we got, and he draws really great things.
【Song Design】 Eight female protagonists are stacked together like tarot cards
Beijing News: The songs included in the album are Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese, did you initially decide to compose this album in different languages? Does it feel different to interpret the same song in different languages?
Ruolin Wang: I like a lot of layers of color, and I also like to have regular complexity, so I think different languages can enrich the characters in this album for me, and if I just sing a language, it seems that the role will be relatively single. When recording, I think there are some details that are more intuitive, such as the Chinese version of "Lover" and the Japanese version, which are actually very similar colors in my mind, but when I sing some bite words, the emotions have already produced different guidance, so when I sing it, I think there are some differences.
Beijing News: When interpreting each song, will you draw a specific image of different women in your mind?
Wang Ruolin: Actually, there will be, for example, I think the woman in "Love is Calling Me", she has absolute feminine charm, but she also seems to be a warrior, very strong, not afraid of burning herself, not afraid of becoming the most extreme kind of woman. It seems that many people are afraid to express such a state, and I myself am like this, although I know that I have such a side in my heart, but in real life, I am actually afraid to present it.
Beijing News: If the eight heroines of the eight songs on the album all live in the same building or the same dormitory, what do you think it will be like?
Ruolin Wang: I think it is unlikely, because women are their protagonists when they are in love, so I think that in each song they are their own protagonists, with their own different charms. I'd think of them more as tarot cards, where the images would overlap but wouldn't actually live together. They are not living, they are just a dream.
【Singing style】 30-year-old meets confusion to express floating emotions
Beijing News: I have already done the cover album of "Midnight Theater" before, will it be more familiar to try cover songs this time?
Ruolin Wang: In fact, I feel more confused. I was 30 years old when I was recording this album, and I've always had a sense of direction, or I thought I knew who I was, but maybe after making music for a long time, I would suddenly lose my sharp shape and feel as if I was floating. When I recorded this album, it was precisely because of some of these feelings that I was in a way more involved in expressing the emotions in the music. Like when I sang "Forget Him", I could feel the feeling of not being able to catch a lot of things around me.
Beijing News: Is there a direct relationship between this sense of confusion and age?
Wang Ruolin: There will be a relationship, maybe you have been doing something for a long time, you will suddenly lose the sense of freshness. The theme of my next album is "Broken Hotel", but I will now have a feeling that it will not surpass "Bully House", because whether it is the lyric material and production, "Bully House" is a very ideal album for me, "Broken Hotel" actually has some similarities with it, and I am not very sure and confident. Maybe I need some time, or a few more things in my life, to break out of this state, because from the perspective of other musicians or artists, this does not seem to be an abnormal thing.
Beijing News reporter Yang Chang
Edited by Tian Kaini Proofreader Zhai Yongjun