Some people say that compared with the "king of the music world", we seem to have not seen the words "music queen" for a long time.
On a Q&A platform, there is even a question like this: "Has there ever been a Diva-level female singer in China so far?" ”
This makes people wonder: Are the female singers in the Chinese music scene really silent today?
The answer, of course, is no.
According to the fourth quarter of 2020 financial report released by Tencent Music Entertainment Group (TME) on March 23, by the end of 2020, through the continuous promotion of content diversity and equal opportunities, the proportion of female original musicians on the platform has reached nearly 40%.
This statistic certainly does not mean that the next diva-level singer will be born, but it is enough to prove that female musicians are occupying a new flashpoint.
And this is also a reminder not to forget that since the birth of Chinese pop music, female singers have always been very sassy.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" >1. In every era, there are female singers who have amazed a generation</h1>
For the history of Chinese pop music, the female singer with the most special significance is undoubtedly Teresa Teng.
She is one of the world's top ten most popular female singers selected by Time Magazine, and it can be said that where there are Chinese in the world, there are her songs.
In 1953, Teresa Teng was born in Dapi Township, Yunlin County, Taiwan Province, with four brothers and sisters, and her father was a retired military officer who made a living by selling large cakes on bicycles. She debuted at the age of 15 and took on the responsibility of supporting her family on her shoulders. Who would have thought that after this step was taken, it would achieve a century of legends in the music world.
In the thirty years of the music scene, she has created a graceful and beautiful, light and humorous singing aesthetic, interpreting countless classics. For example, "Sweet Honey", "Story of a Small Town", "Alone on the West Building", "See Cooking Smoke Again" and so on.
In the late '70s, her songs quietly became popular in coastal areas through ripped tapes, and subsequently spread across the continent. Jia Zhangke's "Platform", Wang Xiaoshuai's "Qinghong" and Feng Xiaogang's "Fanghua" all restore the scene when the youth listened to Teresa Teng.
Before the spring breeze of reform is about to arrive, it is precisely the female singer's tender watery singing, awakening the hearts of a generation of young people who have been frozen for a long time and becoming the most special symbol of the times.
After the era of "listening to Old Deng during the day and secretly listening to Little Deng at night", the unprecedented open cultural environment in the mid-to-late 80s gave the ears of the Chinese people more choices.
The first batch of Hong Kong and Taiwan female singers who became popular in the mainland impacted the stereotype that "women should be beautiful and sweet", showing a variety of styles and powerful personalities.
For example, the song route is gorgeous and avant-garde, the stage is gorgeous and bold, and the style is ever-changing" Mei Yanfang.
Li Zhanpeng, a cultural studies scholar, once commented on the eyes of this "big sister in the music world": "In the past, most of the actresses who appeared in the media were gentle, pleasing to the eye, and not aggressive, but Mei Yanfang's image was different from them, she did not want to be just a pleasing woman, but turned back to resist the gaze of men staring at women, which made many people feel very uneasy." ”
Another example is Ye Qianwen, who once refused to sing the work of "Da Li Shhhh" and became popular all over the taiwan strait and three places with her free-spirited works such as "Dashing Walk Back"; Lin Yilian, who challenged the tradition with a short hair image; Chen Shuhua, who set a record for the first album in the history of Taiwanese music to sell more than one million; Zhen Ni, who was called "the giant lung of the music world" by Huang Xia; Su Rui, who was hailed as a "milestone" in the Chinese music scene; Cai Qin, who was known as the "Queen of Velvet Songs"; Chen Huixian, who became popular in the entire Chinese-speaking world with "A Thousand Thousand Que Songs"; "The Most Successful Exemplary Model of Singing and Amphibians". Zheng Xiuwen and so on.
Their voices also record the style of the times when people pursue self-liberation and dare to love and hate.
At the same time, mainland pop music also began to take off in the mid-to-late 1980s. The mainstream stage has stepped out of the new era of singers represented by Mao Amin. Female singers also lead the two most important trends.
At the end of 1984, Zhang Qiang, a 17-year-old Beijing girl, released her first cover album "Tokyo Nights", which opened her way to "Disco Queen". From 1985 to 1987, she published more than twenty albums, each selling millions.
In the era of "as long as there is a vacant lot, there will be people dancing", from the city to the township, Zhang Qiang's "electric sound" flowed in every tape recorder, and the thorny release of youthful and uninhibited energy. According to her veteran fans, As soon as I heard Zhang Qiang sing, it was like electricity, from the back of my head to the heels were straightened, it was really fun. ”
In 1987, Cheng Lin's singing of "Xintianyou" opened the popularity of "Northwest Wind". Since then, Fan Linlin, Hang Tianqi and Li Na have all sung "Loess High Slope", Na Ying's "Ravine", Wei Wei's "Wish", and Tian Zhen's "Hometown of My Love", so that this boom of rough local forces has swept across the north and south of the river.
In the early 1990s, women also appeared in the rock and roll boom in the mainland.
In January 1990, China's first all-female rock band "Cobra" performed for the first time in Chengdu, becoming a representative of Chinese women's pursuit of avant-garde culture. Luo Qi of Nanchang, Jiangxi Province, became the lead singer of the compass band, and won the title of "China's First Rock Girl" with works such as "Back" and "Do Whatever You Want".
Cobra
Compass Band
In the field of popular music, Tian Zhen and Na Ying, who had previously become famous in the "Northwest Wind" boom, and Sun Yue, who became popular with "Wish You Peace", also continued to break through themselves in the 90s and formed their own unique styles.
Sun Yue completed a contrasting transformation in the 1990s
And their musical journey is also the process of women with distinct personalities, from following the trend to finding themselves.
Tian Zhen, who has just begun to debut, imitates Teresa Teng and Su Rui to sing lyrical love songs. It wasn't until the end of the 80s when she recorded "The Last Moment" that she made her hoarse and calm voice for the first time, knowing what a song that only Tian Zhen could sing, and opening up a different path of her own and distinctive style. After falling into silence in the early 1990s, in 1996, with the album "Tian Zhen", it set the highest sales of genuine records in China that year, of which Xu Wei's "Persistence" and her own fill-in "Wildflower" were extremely popular.
Tian Zhen in his youth
In addition to music, Tian Zhen is also a black and white person who dares to love and hate. In 2001, at the "China Pop Song List" awards ceremony, she angrily threw the microphone and left the scene in anger, protesting against the black curtain. In 2003, when the Football Association selected "Rainbow Sonorous Roses" as the theme song of the World Cup to give her the copyright fee, she said: "What money do we want?" nabs. Hello to the matter. ”
And when Na Ying was not famous in the 80s, she had no choice, and even used the pseudonyms Su Bing and Su Ran to cover Su Rui's songs. After she came to prominence with "The Ravine", she refused to become a mainstream "party singer", but chose to enter the fiercely competitive Hong Kong and Taiwan markets.
The road is bumpy. In 1993, Na Ying signed a contract with Taiwan's Fumao Records, and released his first Chinese album "For You to Think Twilight" the following year, but the response of this soft-winded record was mediocre. Until 1995, she changed the tender style of the song in her second album "The Black of The Day And Doesn't Understand the Night", and swept the radio charts around the world with vivid emotional catharsis, thus laying the route of "Love Song Queen".
Although more than twenty years have passed, there are some things that have remained in people who have been baptized by the great times. In those years, he killed a seven-in-seven-out Na Ying on both sides of the strait and three places, and he is still proud and righteous, and does not change his true disposition.
Just ask the inner entertainment rolled into a cabbage field, full of hypocritical people today, who dares to "roar" like that sister:
Speaking of the evergreen trees of the music world that grew up in the 90s, how can we not mention Faye Wong.
In the 1998 Spring Festival Gala, Na Ying and Faye Wong sang "Meet 1998"
Most of the people who originally worked with Faye Wong in the "Controversy of the Gods" in the Chinese music scene are now either lonely gods or have long fallen, and few people like her, who have not updated Weibo for six years, can still occupy the center of the public's topic.
Faye Wong was lucky that when she was 15 years old, she had a godsend - a record company in Beijing wanted to release a cover album of Teresa Teng, and she was attracted. After repeated entanglements, Faye Wong agreed with the support of her father, which led to her first album: "Where does the wind come from". At that time, no one expected that this introverted but extremely characterful Beijing Dami would become a diva-level superstar who was popular all over the taiwan strait and even the Asian music scene many years later.
Girls' Generation Faye Wong and "Where the Wind Comes From"
In 1987, Faye Wong gave up her admission to the Biology Department of Xiamen University and moved to Hong Kong with her father, officially debuting two years later. Since her debut, her personal style has been extremely strong. "Fan", "Wild Thoughts", "Sky", "Singing Tour", "Eyes on Me", "Will Love"... In the past thirty years, his works have continued, and various awards and reputations have also continued.
In other Asian countries, Faye Wong has also left behind deeds that are talked about.
In March 1999, two consecutive "FayeWong Japan-Tokyo" concerts kicked off at budokan in Tokyo, Japan, and the venue, which could accommodate 10,000 fans, was packed. The guests in the audience were also star-studded, the first came Takuya Kimura and Noriko Sakai, and the second came Toyo Takeno and Zhang Guorong. During this period, Kashiwara Chong, like a fan, fanatically asked Faye Wong for autographs.
Faye Wong is the brightest star in the "Millennium Music Phenomenon", but in the starry sky where she is located, she is not alone.
The late 1990s and early 1990s were the last golden years of the recording industry. Many Chinese female singers and groups, such as Zhang Huimei, Sun Yanzi, Yung Zu'er, Xu Meijing, Karen Mok, Chen Lin, Xiao Yaxuan, Chen Huilin, Jolin Tsai, Li Wei, Zhang Shaohan, Cai Jianya, Fan Weiqi, Liang Jingru, Zhou Hui, Ye Bei, Wang Xinling, S· H· E, Twins, etc., have left a common memory for more than one generation.
The musical path of these female singers shows a more diversified posture.
For example, S· H· E is the irreplaceable "first girl group" in the hearts of the post-80s and 90s. The three of them have different personalities and appearances, and as idols, they tell each girl that there is more than one standard of beauty.
They hit the hearts of young boys and girls with a song "Lovers Are Not Enough". Every summer after 2004, it belongs to S· H· E's. At that time, "Super Star" could be heard everywhere in the streets. When pressing the road with peers, casually humming a melody of "Persian Cat" and "Semi-Sugarism", someone can pick it up.
In 2018, the three put on their debut costumes and sang a song called "Seventeen" – seventeen years after their debut.
Today, Hebe is still active in the music world, just using the real name Tian Fuzhen, she sang a lot of songs, but still can't cover the aura of the team era; Ella is still lively and cheerful, she takes over variety shows, hosts, constantly loses, and constantly stands up, and finally becomes a positive result; Selina has experienced phoenix nirvana, a fire to restart her life, standing up a few years later, still the proud and strong girl.
Another example is Jolin Tsai. Some people feel that she became popular because she "perfectly executed the persona set for her by the record company". But from the moment she debuted, she was surrounded by controversy. From the earliest "Love 36 Plans", to the later "Secret Agent J", which was said to be "poor in donkey skills", and later "Yuck", which "let go of the self"... Some people loved her, and some people hated her. These people who liked her and those who didn't like her "united" and even gave birth to a new language, the lingual.
But in the midst of mixed reputations, Jolin Tsai has maintained a state of balance between "pandering" and "self" over the years, despite her ups and downs, just as she has been self-managing for ten years. There is a lyric in her 2018 "Strange Beauty", "What standards are in a hurry to determine the survival of the fittest.". It's a mockery of aesthetic stereotypes, and it's certainly a Jolin Tsai sobriety —no matter what you say about me, I am who I am.
We can't forget "Super Girl", which has dominated television since the summer of 2004, which opened a carnival of "national drafts" and for the first time distributed the power of "debut" to every ordinary girl.
In addition to Li Yuchun, who became a hit and appeared on Time Magazine, there are Zhou Bichang, Zhang Liangying, He Jie, Huang Yali and others, who are still active in the music scene.
Gao Xiaosong said: That year, all the record companies in Beijing pulled up banners and prepared to greet Li Yuchun
Among them, Li Yuchun's debut from Supergirl to the present, every step has triggered a phenomenon-level hot discussion. Before Li Yuchun, there was no idol in the Chinese music scene with a "neutral style", and her appearance subverted the traditional concept of the public. After her, artists of the same type are also difficult to get out of the right.
"It turns out that a female singer can still do this." This was what most people knew about Li Yuchun at that time.
Sixteen years after his debut, Li Yuchun maintained his own rhythm every step. Li Yuchun is Li Yuchun, as she said: "The most beautiful moment for women is the moment when it is not defined." ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >2. Looking forward to the next era of flowers blooming</h1>
There are talented people in the jiangshan generation, each leading the way for hundreds of years. The female singers of the Chinese music scene in the past have not lived up to their times. Today, the times are calling for the emergence of a new generation of female singers.
In recent years, female singers who are active in the Chinese music scene, such as Deng Ziqi, Chen Grain, Yuan Yawei, Dou Jingtong, Ji Kejunyi, Wu Moxuan, Zhang Bichen, Xu Jiaying, etc., have brought more personalized styles and more brilliant colors to the music scene. The rap field, which has long been dominated by men, has also emerged in recent years, such as Wanida, VAVA, Yang Laosan, Nai Wan, Chen Zitong, Lows0n and other female Rappers. In the field of rock and roll, Shi Lu, who is also active in the hedgehog band, Liu Min, who reshapes the power of the statue, Chen Sijiang of Hai pengsen, Meccadel's gate chess and so on, female musicians.
Chen Sijiang
Mercader Band
Regardless of the field of female singers, the most important change in their expression is to begin to express their concern and thinking about themselves and reality from the perspective of women.
At the end of 2020, Tan Weiwei released a new album "3811", eleven songs with different styles named after eleven women, paying tribute to eleven different women. Among them, there is "Wu Chunfang", who drives a taxi alone with her children to support her family, there is the legendary female poet "Yu Xuanji", who is obsessed with love, and the elderly illiterate who belongs to the vulnerable groups in society, "Zhao Guiling" who was left behind by the mobile Internet era, and the victims of domestic violence under the pseudonym "Xiaojuan".
Tan Weiwei sang "Xiao Juan" at TME live "3811 Online Concert"
Among them, the most out-of-the-loop "Xiao Juan", in addition to Tan Weiwei's singing skills, there are countless women hidden behind the singing voices and annihilated in social news.
Another example is on the stage of "Rap New Generation" in 2020, Yu Zhen, who was still working in Beijing at the time, sang a song "She and Her and Her".
Appearance anxiety, marital pressure, workplace discrimination... From the perspective of three girls, Yu Zhen expressed the real troubles of being born as a woman, and also expressed their demands - a world without gaze, and air that can breathe freely.
The true expressions of all kinds of loud voices, as well as the awakening of women's consciousness behind them, are still clear evidence that female musicians are trying to lead the times forward.
The classics left by female singers in the recording era are certainly worth revisiting and remembering. But the expressions of female singers in this era are equally wonderful. It's just that today's cyber ocean is really turbulent, often making those voices that we would otherwise fall in love with, miss with us.
You can hear Zhang Qianqian, who has returned again after twenty years, singing in a still angular voice, "I want to be a rose against the wind, and life is constantly flying upwards." ”
You can see Song Daiting, who began writing songs at the age of 12 and is still pursuing her dreams, wrote in "Nirvana Queen" that "dangerous forest survival law, we will never surrender, Gang Gang will be positive!" ”
Folk singer Lin Bian was recommended by "Musician Chronicle"
You can hear the post-90s folk singer Lin Bian, in the album "Little Pony", singing the chai rice oil and salt in her life, and also asking about the turmoil in her heart: "The pony writes other people's stories, and the pony is diligent and earnest. Ponies also have their own days, but who will write the story of ponies? ”
Instead of indulging in the glory of the past and asking "when will there be another diva", we may wish to listen to the sincere singing voice of women in this era. A wider world of music will surely meet you in these sounds.
Don't take it lightly to say that music is dead, because they have been singing with their hearts.