Written by / Wang Jingfan
In the frenzy of Chinese music releases at the end of last year, 2020 Treasure Newcomer Cao Yang's "Prescribed Situation" is undoubtedly a good album that is quite eye-catching.
In addition to the blessings of Jay Chou and Nicholas Tse, two god-level heavenly kings, Cao Yang's excellent performance in "The Voice of China" to reach the top five in the country has also given Cao Yang a wave of passers-by fans. Everyone is very interested in this little brother who insists on "singing love songs seriously" on the stage of good voice.
The "Prescribed Situation", which completed the recording work in the Good Voice competition, actually recorded the change of mood of Cao Yang since the competition. After the end of the Voice Competition, Cao Yang launched a series of new disc publicity work without stopping: shooting MVs, playing songs, hair films... Yesterday (January 15), Cao Yang even brought a new album to TME live!
For newcomers, it is quite difficult to have a solo concert of their own like "New Album Concert of "Prescribed Situations". On the one hand, the new debut songs are not accumulated enough to fill the whole audience; on the other hand, the newcomers' performance experience is still shallow, and it is difficult to completely hold the whole audience alone.
But these problems are not problems for "senior newcomer" Cao Yang. Cao Yang, who wrote his first demo ("July") at the age of 16, has accumulated enough thickness over the years to open a solo concert of "singing his own songs". Most of the songs in the new disc "Prescribed Situations" are also written by Cao Yang.
What's more, Cao Yang, who is a musical actor, also has the confidence that most of the newcomers in the music industry can't reach. Hundreds of musicals have been performed all the way down, and the Live performance experience that Cao Yang has learned from it should be much higher than that of many of his peers. The "dual identity" of singers and actors is also the fundamental reason why Cao Yang has been able to quickly stand out.
Many people first heard about Cao Yang because of Jay Chou's "The Secret That Cannot Be Said" musical. Being able to play the male number one "Ye Xianglun" in the classic repertoire shows how optimistic Jay Chou is about this seedling. To play "Ye Xianglun" well, you must first sing Zhou Dong's songs. Some people even said that the selected Cao Yang was the new generation of successors of Zhou Dongqin.
Finally, Jay Chou even signed Cao Yang, the legendary "successor", into his own Jewell music and cultivated it as if he were his own son. On TME live, Cao Yang also deliberately selected two golden songs "Snail" and "Stranded" by the boss to express his heartfelt thanks to Jay Chou.
However, the musical style that Cao Yang finally chose in the first album "Prescribed Situation" was not the "Jay Chou" Style that was originally thought by the outside world. Surprisingly, Cao Yang instead took a different path and chose a path that has rarely been chosen in the Chinese music scene in recent years: a love singer.
In the past years, singing love songs was probably the quickest way for Chinese newcomers to become popular. Being able to have a national tear-jerking song that is well known on the streets can make you quickly ascend to the front line. But time has changed, and today's Chinese music scene, which is chasing diverse and cutting-edge styles, seems to have become more and more difficult to come up with a true love singer.
Cao Yang, this person, exudes a "retro" extreme temperament from his bones. The "retro" here does not refer to the outdated and old-fashioned, but to his inheritance, inheritance and development of the classic style of the Chinese music scene. In today's world, is there any other way out of singing love songs? Cao Yang wanted to use the example of what he was practicing to illustrate: he could.
In the new album "Prescribed Situations", almost 70% of the works are "healing love songs" that Cao Yang has improved from the classic Chinese love song style of the past. After a turbulent year, looking back and listening to Cao Yang's gentle chanting of emotional moods, of course, there is a taste in my heart.
From "Airport", "Scattered" to "Understand", Cao Yang, who was born with a healing voice, tries to connect in every song, which is a common emotional expression between people. Empathy for the listener is also the meaning of the love song itself: to sing it to those who have been hurt, so that they can reconcile with life.
"You Say You Can't Yet" written by Fang Wenshan, the lyricist fang Wenshan of Zhou Dong, can summarize Cao Yang's healing love song route: "After drinking wine, you will always talk to me..." Born with a kind face of "listener", Cao Yang is definitely the most suitable kind of love singer for everyone to "chat" with you with music after getting drunk.
I will regard Cao Yang's "Prescribed Situation" as a new starting point for the retro trend of the Chinese music scene. After injecting the musical elements of the current generation, Cao Yang's sincere and delicate love songs are also a kind of "return to the basics" for many young people who have not personally experienced the glorious years of Chinese love songs in the last century.
In order to sing love songs into the hearts of the audience, in addition to the singer's own singing skills must be excellent, the live interpretation is also a very important part. Compared with simply listening to audio, Live, which can see the singer's own expression and action details, coupled with the sound and picture effect of the large-screen Visual, is a more comprehensive love song display.
Therefore, Cao Yang's TME live is like converting the original "audible" 2D flat love song into a 3D stereoscopic love song that can be heard and seen. The improvisational experience of past cultivation in the musical theater scene can also help Cao Yang enter the "immersive" performance state of TME live.
The reason why it is called "performance" is because Cao Yang's premiere is not just a simple concert. Cao Yang even ingeniously and uniquely combines the unique elements of many musicals into the interpretation of each scene, presenting a more extreme sensory enjoyment to the audience of TME live.
How much does Cao Yang really love musicals? What you don't know is that even the four words "prescribed situation" are technical terms from the musical theater industry. When rehearsing musicals in those years, the teacher often chanted in Cao Yang's ear what was the "prescribed situation". The teachings of the master eventually made Cao Yang's new album name.
Engraved behind the name "Prescribed Situation" is Cao Yang's sense of faith in the performing arts. You must fully believe that you are the character in the story, so that you can breathe with the character and share the fate. In this way, Cao Yang integrated his solid singing skills, rich body language, and meticulous micro-expressions into the prescribed situation of TME live.
In each song of "Prescribed Situation", Cao Yang quietly hides a miniature musical. If the album "Prescribed Situation" is like a "CD musical" that can be listened to, then Cao Yang's new scene of TME live has realized the visualization of "CD musical".
With the prescribed situation of the story, the new scene of TME live continues to advance, and Cao Yang also brings out different roles in different music: singing their life story, but also taking this opportunity to heal more listeners with the same experience. In Cao Yang's song, we can even directly feel the ups and downs of life.
From this point of view, Cao Yang's premiere concert is probably the first time in the history of TME live performances to be presented in the form of a "CD musical"! With a "prescribed situation", the audience played with N kinds of prescribed situations from the inside out, which is not only the skill of Cao Yang himself, but also the luck of being a TME live audience.
Extending from hearing to vision is an advance in many different dimensions of performance forms. From a musical actor to a singer, the evolution that Cao Yang has experienced in the process is also a rebirth experience. In the past, cao Yang only needed to play "others" wholeheartedly in musicals; now as a singer, he must learn how to play the role of "himself".
On TME live, Cao Yang also frankly dissected the evolutionary process of his heart: after becoming a singer, he knew more who "he" really was, and then found his true self. "When you're a singer, unlike in a musical before, no one will tell you what to do next, what to sing... Everything can be imagined and decided by oneself. ”
In the end, singing is actually "singing yourself"! What is more difficult than acting in a musical is how to "play yourself well" in creation. Cao Yang's biggest understanding since the film was released is that singers need to honestly tell the audience in their music what kind of person "I" am, in order to get more heartfelt love from music fans.
At TME live's "Prescribed Situation" new album premiere meeting, Cao Yang actually sang 11 new songs from beginning to end. At the moment when the single is popular, this is simply incredible! Thanks to Cao Yang, the concept of "album" did not disappear in place, but found a way to coexist with the times.
Attentive fans will notice that the order of the 11 songs on the "Prescribed Situations" album is actually different from the order of their songs on this TME live playlist. According to TME live's "CD musical" performance concept, Cao Yang deliberately rearranged the playlist once to maximize the activation of the energy field between each song.
The following is a little personal observation of Cao Yang's TME live: taking the love song "I Think I Love You" as the dividing point, Cao Yang appeared in two sets of light color and dark color costumes, probably to interpret the musical theater concept of "day and night" in the first and second half of TME live.
In the first half, works such as "Airport", "You Say You Can't Tell", and "Scattered" are relatively bitter lonely love songs; in the second half, Cao Yang uses positive love songs such as "One More Day", "Understood" and "Shimmer" to encourage everyone to bravely walk out of the haze of life and find their own life shimmer.
Who says love songs can only scream from the sky and tear their hearts and lungs? Cao Yang, who stepped out of the "comfort zone of love songs", specially wrote a sweet song "I Think I Love You". This new attempt has attracted a lot of positive repercussions. As for the ghost Wu Yingjie's cross-city air duet, it is even more unintentional, echoing the current epidemic generation of "long-distance love".
On TME live, when it comes to the Urban R&B style of "I Think I Love You", the joy that Cao Yang can't hide in his heart is absolutely overflowing. From a small listener who liked this style of music, when he grew up, he became a performer of this style, and Cao Yang finally realized his wish.
In the "Quick Question and Answer" session of the premiere concert, in addition to the famous works of Jay Chou, the owner of "Words Must Cue", Cao Yang also talked about Tao Zhe's "Tian tian" and Fang Datong's "Love Love Love"... Cao Yang, who grew up listening to these Chinese classic R&B songs, has a love for R&B, just like the song title "I Think I Love You", which is self-evident.
The Chinese music scene really needs more "inheritors" like Cao Yang who truly love music in order to pass on the most moving spiritual core of Chinese songs from generation to generation. Then, I couldn't help but think about it: Among the younger generation of viewers who watched Cao Yang's TME live last night, would there be a chance that the next Cao Yang would appear?
Only when people like TME live are willing to continuously provide platforms and performance opportunities for the new generation of singers, can the Chinese music scene truly achieve a virtuous circle. Cao Yang's new TME live debut singing gives a very good demonstration effect, on the stage of TME live, we will also witness more young musicians in different aspects.
TME live, the industry leader brand, is also presenting the infinite possibilities of the brand itself with one high-quality online concert after another. With the full support of TME (Tencent Music Entertainment Group)'s four major platforms QQ Music, Kugou Music, Kuwo Music, and National K Songs, TME live has become an indispensable part of the lives of young music fans.
Since its birth in March last year, TME live has not only created tens of billions of internet topics, but also left us with countless classic moments of "lifetime": Mayday, Eason Chan, Sun Yanzi... The TME live production team, which treats every sincere performance with "standardization", tries to make the love and warmth of music always run through every performance.
Of course, TME live is not only the kind of online concert in the traditional sense, they hope to use every high-quality Live and every song that has touched tens of thousands of people to stimulate the collective emotional resonance of different generations, and thus convey the brand temperature of TME live. Cao Yang's emotional TME live is a good example.
In addition to successfully creating a new debut song for Cao Yang of "Prescribed Situation", before that, TME live also worked with Chen Chusheng, Tan Weiwei and other musicians to tailor online concerts for them on the new album. Looking ahead, TME live's new scenes will continue to deepen this emerging market, and continue to innovate in form to provide support for more musicians' film release plans.
Before TME live, Cao Yang had already released the physical album of "Prescribed Situations". In the record binding of the physical version of "Prescribed Situation", the designer also deliberately hid Cao Yang's face in the lottery design similar to "scratch music". Fans have to scrape off the gray coating by hand to see Cao Yang on the cover of the record.
The interesting "scratch music" design of "Prescribed Situation" seems to be a metaphor for Cao Yang and TME live at this moment: there are still many unknown lives to be explored, and there are still many interesting parts to be opened. Looking forward to 2021, when the prospects are still unclear, let us suddenly be right with a playful mood like "scratch music".
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