Text | Xing Shubo real
How do Chinese youth in 2075 view the pop culture market 50 years ago?
The answer given by Director Guo Fan's "The Wandering Earth" is the internet divine comedy "Seagrass seaweed" and the VR girl that his grandfather has treasured for 50 years.
This is not an exception. The answer given in Jia Zhangke's "Good People of the Three Gorges" is "Rats Love Rice".
Look at the international market. The answer given in Ridley Scott's The Martian is the late musician David Bowie's star man.
Movies reflect social reality, even in science fiction films. When Chinese directors choose to reflect the current popular culture, they are not exempt from vulgarity, and they are still a bit depressed.
Of course, the wind direction of China's TOP-level singing program "Singer" actually reflects the current pop music market to some extent.
Like the situation of Chinese directors, the producers of "Singer" are also unavoidable and somewhat depressed.
After the end of this edition of "Singer", people found it cold. The cool performance is that: first, there is no old singer turning red, such as Huang Qishan and other singers who turned red in that year; second, no new singers out of the circle, as amazing as Li Ronghao's small eyes were spotted; third, no old songs turned red, such as Deng Ziqi's cover of Beyond's "Like You" is still a must-have track at the door of convenience stores; fourth, there is no new song beating, such as Zhao Lei's song "Chengdu", included in the album "Can't Grow Up" released in December 2016, after debuting on the stage "Singer" a month later, it immediately became popular all over the country. The ability to carry goods is not bad.
This year's "Singer" has unsurprisingly become a "four-no platter party" for no new and old singers to turn red and no new and old good songs. Although the production team racked their brains to collect song lists, invited various stars to help, and set up a new competition format to stimulate the perception, basically a cup of water.
Hong Tao or that Hong Tao, classic organic milk or that box of classic organic milk, how did the flower of the most colorful music program in Greater China lose its imagination?
This problem seems to be a problem of the program itself, but in fact, if the overall situation of history looks at this problem, it is more complicated than imagined.
<h2>One</h2>
TFboys four times on the Spring Festival Gala, one more time can be equal to the king Jay Chou, completely announcing the rise of domestic idol boy bands;
"Taishan Next Door", "Learning to Meow" and other "Douyin Divine Comedy" attacked various parties, and Zheng Jun, the angry rock old cannon, openly scolded: "This is shit";
Internet celebrities Liu Yuning and Feng Timo broke the circle of popular variety shows such as "Singer" and "Instant Electric Sound" to enter the mainstream vision, and competed with Liu Huan and Yang Kun on the same stage, I don't know whether it is because Liu Huan's singing career has been lowered to the level of Internet celebrities, or Internet celebrities have surpassed Liu Huan?
However, the dark horse of the year is the "Rocket Girl" leader Hua Danyang surpassed. In the past, the reason why artists were artists was that they had a craft, and they could sing and dance and talk about passages, and even those who sold art on the flyover would take a big chest and crush a stone.
Nowadays, Yang Chaoyue has single-handedly pulled down the profession of artist to the point where he can have no talent and no art, and he can capture thousands of traffic just by relying on his face. The girl group is absolutely C-position, the stage is the center of the universe, even to participate in a spit show, but also with Tang Guoqiang and other national drama theater first-class actors on an equal footing, has become a "spit main coffee".
The audience didn't understand, and it was normal to complain online. At the 2012 Hunan New Year's Eve Party, Tianhou Wang Fei sang and smashed, in the face of audience criticism, she could also humbly post apologies on Weibo; in 1985, due to technical reasons, the CCTV Spring Festival Gala scheduling loopholes were full of loopholes, and the performance failed. Eleven days later, News Network publicly apologized. General director Huang Yihe has so far mentioned that "I have a heart that wants to die."
Why is it so exciting? Because director Huang Yihe knows that the Spring Festival Gala is a festival for Chinese people around the world and the face of the country, it cannot be slackened, let alone made up. Because Tianhou Faye Knows that even if it is just an ordinary New Year's Eve party, singing is sorry for the audience, and it should apologize, this is Yide.
And Yang Chaochao smashed the performance and advanced. In the face of audience questioning, she said this:
"Whatever you want to question, my fans voted for me, I sat there, I told you I wasn't afraid."
Fans are bigger than faces, and fans are bigger than art. The implication is that Yang surpasses fans and loves Yang beyond, and can transcend all worldly evaluations, singing skills and stage performance. At this moment, Yang Chaoyue is no longer Yang Chaoyue, but the Virgin Mary of fans, a clay sculpture of the idol god-making movement.
Bauman said in Community: "Idols give artificial dreams and give shapes to dreams. He explains: "Idols make people believe that they can get similar successful experiences from idols without having to succeed themselves. He believes that idols only tell people that they can succeed as long as they work hard, and take personal struggle as the only condition, without considering the specific social environment and the objective conditions of the individual.
Yang surpassed and refreshed Bowman's theory, as if there is no need for personal struggle, as long as a good face, you can win the world and win you. This is also in line with the definition of idol entertainment in "Community": "The essence of entertainment is temptation... Idols need to be glorious enough to be captivated by them. ”
Bowman reveals the inner laws of the modern entertainment industry, but it is clearly not in line with the mainstream values of our country.
<h2>Two</h2>
When Dionysus is partying, only the industry insiders are sober.
Ma Hao, the producer of the network comprehensive "Children of Tomorrow", first defined the idol as "possessing self-brilliance, self-talent, and self-attitude". She believes that whether in the era of traditional media or the Internet era, the most important thing about idols is to be able to influence fans, "When idols are a special product, we as manufacturers need special care." Once you create a demon, it will affect and produce more demons, and if you create a momentary explosion, there will be no more, and this value will also affect those fans. ”
The winner of "Children of Tomorrow" that year was original singer Mao Buyi. He sang in "Dispel Sorrows" that "a cup of freedom, a cup of death." "This song inherits the humanistic feelings of campus folk songs since Li Zongsheng, simple and simple, and eloquent. The construction of images such as "Mao is not easy to grow up with the kindness of his hometown" rarely commented on the official website of the Communist Youth League, so that young people who are struggling in life but sometimes feel powerless find emotional resonance. ”
But such a rare singer-songwriter has to succumb to the market. The current music market is more welcome to shout Big Brother Mai and cover Internet celebrities. He created "If One Day I Become Rich" for MC Tianyou, putting together the poverty in the bones of folk songs and the soil in the bones of shouting wheat, and successfully climbed the various rankings. Don't want to flow the year unfavorably, in February 2018, MC Tianyou's song "Meth you are so wonderful, all the troubles are thrown away" described the shouting of wheat that instigated drug use, along with the CCTV camera on the "Focus Interview". This year, Internet celebrity Liu Yuning sang Mao's "People Like You" to enter the "Singer" arena. Although it was eliminated, it still showed its spring light in this most influential program in Greater China. The original singer Mao is not easy today but is still behind the scenes, and the program invitation is limited.
It's not fair, but so what?
In the "2017 China Idol Industry Development Trend and Market Prospect Forecast" report, China Information Industry Network predicts that by 2020, the total size of China's music idol market will reach 49.459 billion, and the CAGR (compound annual growth rate) will be about 31%.
Everyone has a question: what's next? Looking back at the history of the idol industry, taking history as a mirror, there may be an answer.
<h2>Three</h2>
On Chinese New Year's Eve night this year, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe posted a video on CCTV to celebrate the New Year, and Japan's iconic Tokyo Tower also held a lighting up Chinese red event. This marks a new stage in Japan-China relations.
At the beginning of reform and opening up, China and Japan also experienced a honeymoon period. Japanese pop culture has profoundly influenced generations of Chinese. Founded in 1985, the Junior Team was the first JCP orchestra to go global. Prior to this, Japanese pop music was dominated by local folk songs and island songs. Although the five great singers of Japan's Showa period, Hime Miku Skylark, Naomi Chiaki, Teresa Teresa, Momoe Yamaguchi, and Minako Honda, were very popular in the Asian market, but that was all. The establishment of the junior team can be said to be the first time that Asians have caught up with the international music market and surpassed it. This also laid the foundation for the leading position of Japanese idol groups.
In 1988, Taiwan's Kaili Company copied the Japanese idol group Junior Team and launched the Little Tiger Team. With this as a sign, the idol culture in Chinese-speaking areas began to flourish.
In 1993, on the 35th anniversary of CCTV, Zhao Lirong, Guo Da, and Cai Ming performed the sketch "Star Chaser", which explored the idol culture of this period. With the economic boom of the mainland region, the Chinese idol groups of the 1990s were popular across the Taiwan Straits and the three places. Counting the old fans of these little tiger chasers and the four heavenly kings, they probably have a child in their teens and twenties now. So when their children start chasing K-pop girl groups and even calling for virtual idols such as Hatsune Ai sauce, the family is relatively tolerant and understanding of them. This is the social background for the idol industry to take root in China. Because their parents also came this way.
In contrast, Japan during this period coincided with the Heisei Depression, which led to people being uninterested and angry.
In 1989, the five-year-old junior team released one of the best albums of their careers, PLAYZONE'89, which unfortunately became the cultural culmination of Japanese idols in this period and the beginning of the industry reshuffle.
In the 1980s, these idol groups with good faces could not meet the contradiction between the growing demand of the people for anger against the times and the backward idol culture. Japanese visual rock, represented by X-JAPAN, entered the historical stage and dominated the entire Japanese pop culture of the 90s. Its influence continues to shine in our country's urban-rural interface and on the Internet show, which we call Killing Matt. In the interview with "People", Luo Fuxing, known as the "father of China's killing matt", pointed to the tattoo on his body and said, You see, 60% of the patterns on my body imitate Ishihara Guiya.
The decline of Japanese visual rock in the 1990s stemmed from the fact that they broke through the boundaries of popular entertainment appreciation, broke the inherent balance, and then fell into a thousand miles. This has to do with the nationality in their cultural core.
Ruth Benedict explained the extremes of Japanese culture with his book Chrysanthemum and the Sword. Japan has had a "demon worship" psychology and "geisha" culture since ancient times, coupled with some negative emotions inherent in rock and roll, so that the later Japanese visual rock can no longer carry people's anger, but instead goes further and further on the road of pursuing grotesque demonization and excitement. Its music itself pays more attention to the concept than to the sense of hearing and content, and gradually drifts away from mass culture. People are gradually looking forward to the emergence of healthier and more uplifting idols.
The 1990s coincided with the golden age of love songs in the Chinese music scene on both sides of the taiwan strait and the three places, and Chinese rock was more like a crown jewel at that time, far from being called the mainstream
In 1994, Moyan Sanjie's Hong Kong Hongkan concert was the last glory of Chinese rock.
<h2>Four</h2>
Popular music and idol groups show a very different spirit from the Japanese music scene. They inherited the texts and forms of the Japanese idol explosion of the 1960s, and castrated rock music's reflection and struggle against the times, reducing them to pure entertainment products.
All of this, the next generation of idols is about to come out.
In a report, Ze Media, a new media data monitoring and research company, pointed out three characteristics of next-generation professional idols:
Generally younger in age, with youthful vitality;
Healthy and positive image;
Unique, clearly positioned and styled.
In 1997, idol groups appeared on the Japanese market that met these three characteristics.
At that time, TV Tokyo, which had a peculiar painting style, packaged the five contestants who failed to participate in the "Shooting Q Rock Female Lead Singer Audition" into a group debut, which was the good morning girl group that later became famous. The good morning girl with TV station genes still takes the traditional idol-building route, releasing albums, showing programs, and holding concerts in the stadium. Added the last firewood to the flame of idols at the end of the century.
Good morning girl will eventually become a big mother one day, but in the final analysis, the market environment has changed.
At the beginning of this century, fans in the Internet age needed idol groups that emphasized interactivity, democratization, and companionship. The good morning girls who live in the TV set, no matter how they behave, are separated from the ordinary audience by a thick screen, unable to adapt to the needs of idols in the new era.
In 2009, yasushi Akimoto realized that the essence of an idol group is to interact with fans and influence his idols through the behavior of fans. This began the future glory of Akb. Sell handshake tickets and photos, sell dreams and hormones, and even decide where team members go through fan voting. It can be said that the sense of participation is the core of the akb fan economy, so it is not fair to evaluate the quality of their songs and dance level according to the requirements of musicians.
A byproduct is that since then, in the album charts and Billboard single rankings, the music that really makes music has been marginalized, and the low-level jpop of idols has become mainstream. Listeners with the ability to think independently have become Heisei dead houses that bow down to their idols, and buying albums is like buying a noodle and throwing away the noodles and collecting stamps.
<h2>Five</h2>
It's boring, but they're very lucrative.
On December 5, 2017, the Yano Institute of Economic Research released the "2017 Otaku Market Research" report. According to the report, the market size of the idol field exceeded 187 billion yen, an increase of 20.6%, and it is expected to exceed 210 billion yen this year.
Chinese capital once again smells money.
In 2012, the AKB sister group SNH48 was founded in Shanghai, which subsequently received a huge investment from the Innovation Factory. They want to create a local civilian idol.
According to the incomplete statistics of the "Securities Daily" reporter, in the organization's fifth annual idol annual popularity finals alone, the total amount of fans behind the 66 members who participated in the general election exceeded 100 million yuan. According to the statistics of Ebang Power, the Mimon team, which is on the cusp of the storm this year, has a revenue of only 70 million yuan in 2017. It seems that in this era of looking at faces, the faces of idols are still more profitable than poisonous chicken soup.
Nogi Board 46 member Shiraishi Mai. The group is famous for the photo photos of its members, also known as the "Yan Tuan", which focuses on high value
However, deliberately catering to the market, obsessed with human design, ignoring the ability to sing, the domestic snh48 is still restructured twice in 13 months. The idol grandmaster Japanese girl group is also tired.
In 2018, the original "Creation 101" can be described as a fair showdown between Korean trainees and Japanese idols, and among the 12 final debutants, the Japanese players only won three seats, and the highest-voiced Sakura Miyawaki Sakura only won the third place. In the face of the professional singing and dancing ability created by the Korean girl group through devil-style training, the Japanese idol has gone a long way. This shows that although the fans of the idol are stupid and have a lot of money, they can still see whether they sing well or not, and whether they dance well or not.
The model of mass production of idols has subsided, and the Japanese idol industry has begun to look for ways to differentiate and compete.
In 2018's "The Voice", Huang Anqi, who packed Angel, surprised everyone with a heavy metal black voice. In fact, Japanese producers have also started the idea of heavy metal early.
Baby Metal Lolita Metal Band, formed in 2010, focuses on JPOP and Metal. Lead singer Nakamoto Suzuka was only 14 years old when he formed the group, but he can sing in a difficult black voice. Compared with TFobys, who formed a group of the same age three years later but can only sing milky children's songs, Baby metal is like a bamboo in terms of singing professionals.
BABY METAL makes up for the shortcomings of traditional Japanese idols in the field of singing and dancing, and can also represent industry standards in terms of soundtrack, arrangement, live performance, etc. Not only that, but the musicians who accompany him in the orchestra are already world-renowned rock musicians. You can imagine how much energy Cui Jian Tang Dynasty Dou Weigaoqi and three 14-year-old girls formed a band.
In 2016, baby metal released its second album, which won the 15th place on the UK Comprehensive Album Chart, and won the best result of a Japanese band in this list for Japan in the hometown of heavy metal music.
But because there is no creation and the performance is stereotyped, baby metal cannot save the Japanese idol market. Chorus and chorus yuyuki Mizuno announced his retirement from the group this year. Baby Metal, like many Japanese idol groups, is also invisible.
In order to squeeze out the last drop of oil and water in the idol market, the producers set their sights on the second dimension. From "Love Live" to virtual idol Love Sauce. Last year, it was even more deranged to launch "Backstreet Girls", where transgender gangsters became idols, and "Saga Idols Are Legendary", a sand sculpture animation that died and became a zombie idol.
In Japan, there are not many idols who leave the group to go out, and they are nothing more than marrying people to work as actresses, such as Tachibana, such as Yuya Mikami. In 2016 alone, 6 people in the AKB48 series went to the sea to shoot films. No wonder Hinata teased that AKB was a female talent reserve. Idols, with the popularity accumulated during the girl group period, obtained performance fees and copy sharing income through the shooting of adult films, which is helpless but effective.
And that could be the future of Japanese idols.
<h2>Six</h2>
However, China's girl group idols do not have the exit mechanism of the adult film market, and their choice is to change their careers to become Internet celebrity idols and then find opportunities to enter the mainstream music and performance market. In 2019, the SNH48 detachment was disbanded and the collective announced that it had turned into an Internet celebrity. Internet celebrity idols are also looking for opportunities to enter the mainstream music performance market. This is also the reason why there are so many Internet celebrity idols in this year's party and the major variety song lists mentioned in the opening paragraph.
But for the music market as a whole, it's not a good thing. The popularity of cover singers will lead to the embarrassment of the works of red people who are not red, and in the long run, it will inevitably hit the creative enthusiasm of the originals. The music market without new works is a backwater. This is also why many people in the industry have a lot of criticism of the participation of Internet celebrity singers in "Singer".
As the top music program in China, the influence and dissemination of "Singer" is enough to determine what songs are played in the streets and alleys for a period of time, and which singers will be known to the public. But at the same time, the stage is scarce, with a limited number of places per season. One more Internet celebrity, the original niche music will have one less chance to be well known to the public. It is true that in recent years, the singer's ratings have declined, and the traffic pressure of the production team is huge, hoping to achieve a win-win situation through cooperation with online platforms and Internet celebrity idols. But it is also like this, Internet celebrities enter the room, this wind can not last long.
There is a classic theory in communication science called the medium as information. In fact, each medium also has its own corresponding musical form and singer collection. For example, in the era of broadcasting, studio singers who do not have to show their faces have become popular. To this day, some of the audio auditions are still played in Cai Qin's "Ferry"; in the era of television, pop musicians who master microphone skills and live interaction shine, such as singer Yang Kun's unique typhoon, which is part of his music
Since "Singer" is a TV show, it is necessary to strengthen the advantages of TV programs in terms of authority, variety, and sense of scene, which are also a point that many Internet celebrity singers do not have. What's more, as a state-run television station, in addition to economic benefits, it should take the initiative to assume the social responsibility of excavating excellent musicians. TV music programs give original musicians one more chance, and the public can listen to one more good song.
Of course, this is not to say that Liu Yuning can't get on the stage, as he said on the live broadcast after the game, "This stage is not suitable for me." "Tv station hot face pasted cold ass, ratings should fall or fall, figure what? Moreover, even if there is no radio and television market, the Internet platform has already prepared the stage for Internet celebrities, which is really not bothering TV stations.
Therefore, fans of Internet celebrities do not need to worry that their idols will not enter the mainstream music world. After all, fan live broadcast platforms and video websites have both the willingness to raise the red flag and their money. In addition, the original TV station producers Long Annie, Ma Hao, Chen Xiaoqing, etc. have left the TV station and entered the battlefield of online variety shows. Video platforms naturally have a production team that is not inferior to the production capabilities of TV stations.
The pure online version of the talent show "Creation 101" and "Idol Trainee" are already there, and the pure online version of the song program "This! Is it idols, "Top Music Music Chart" also have, are you afraid that there is no pure online version of "I am a singer" or "Masked Singer"? Believe me, Liu Yuning and Feng Timo's stage is not here, on the server.
Finally, whether from the perspective of market or industry development, TV music programs must maintain the two points of originality and authority, and must maintain the bottom line of mass culture, so as to achieve a balance between the market and art. This is the last barrier that the current network platform cannot completely replace the TV station. This is because the vast majority of private online platforms have the will to have traffic, the financial resources and the method to dominate the music market, but not every one of them pursues art.
Throughout the history of music, from the era of artists, to the era of Geji, to the idol boy band and girl group, art has retreated to the market and moved forward. Now enter the era of anchor shouting wheat, a place of chicken feathers. The process of turning cultural artworks into popular cultural products essentially turns the art problem into an economic problem. Without works, without creations, the market loses its living water. This will cause Internet celebrity idols and their segmented audiences to crowd into the fan platform all day long, regardless of Wei Jin, who do not know whether there is a Han. The mainstream music market does not know and does not recognize. Ordinary audiences can't hear new songs, and they don't like them, so it's better to save a few old songs on their phones.
It's not sensationalism, it's the status quo of the music market.
Although there are tens of millions of songs in China's music copyright market, less than 1% of the songs people often listen to. "Not every capital has the same value, and most of the economic benefits brought by the head work follow the rule of two eights. The exclusive copyright of 1% reserved by the platform is often a representative work of large traffic. ”
There is no new classic and new creation, so that the "Singer" program group is helpless.
Before the show started, the general director Hong Xiao (producer Hong Tao) said that if "Singer 2019" follows the previous method of finding someone to find a singer, it has not been able to find the right person, and even the starting singer can't get together. Not only the singers, but even the songs are nerve-wracking.
Hong Xiao said that the show should continue to do, not only to revitalize the classic songs, but to encourage originality and launch new songs for everyone to remember. "80% of the guests are singer-songwriters."
But after the show started, the audience felt a little deceived. In addition to the old creators such as Liu Huanqiyu, Yang Kun and Wu Qingfeng of the Mesozoic Era, and the long-famous band escape plan, the originality of the new faces is very general. Party singers and influencer singers can't even come up with originals.
"Singer" does not have the original fire, not because people are tired of watching it, but because the new people have no representative works, and the old people do not have a refreshing adaptation. As a result, "Singer" has no songs to sing. Only the singers are left at the urging of the competition system, PK promotion, competition voting, and online games are no different, not as fun as online games. Such a "singer" has no soul, it is better not to do it.
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