EXO "MAMA" promotional image
Wang Yajun was known as the "Fumao Talented Woman".
From "Truth, Goodness and Beauty" and "Pandora" to "Flower in Dreams" and "Philosopher", Wang Yajun has participated in the creation of songs.
Last month, Rain and Kim Tae-hee entered the palace of marriage.
"When I was exhausted and about to fall, when I gradually wanted to give up everything, it was you who hugged me, it was you who held my hand, it was you who did all this..."
Last month, South Korean artist Rain released a new 4-minute song "The Best Gift", which was given to Kim Tae-hee as a marriage proposal, and took the woman's hand and entered the marriage hall at the same time. The person who wrote the lyrics Chinese this marriage proposal song is Wang Yajun, a Taiwanese creator known as "Fumao Talented Woman".
Not a professional songwriter at that time, she won Zhang Shaohan with a song "Invisible Wings", which made her appear on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala in 2007, and this song also became the title of the 2009 Beijing college entrance examination. But many people may not know that it was once the comfort of these two young girls.
Many years later, As the first person to eat crabs, Wang Yajun broke the convention of Korean groups only using literal translation of lyrics in the past, and became the first person to compose Chinese lyrics for Korean idol groups, and the lyrics of the Chinese lyrics of EXO's debut song "MAMA" were from her pen. However, working with Korean companies has not spared her suffering.
A musical talent who studies fine arts
Witnessed the two loves of the Mayday team members
Wang Yajun, who has loved music since childhood, has always dreamed of entering a music school, but mistakenly went to Taipei's private Fuxing Senior Commercial and Industrial Vocational School (referred to as Fuxing Art), "Our school is the best art school in Taiwan, and the graduates are exported to the world." I remember when I was in school, every time there was an international competition about design, and the principal read out the list of winners, except for jewelry design, the rest of the awards were taken by our classmates in our school. However, every time I won an award in the music creation category, there was no half-cent relationship with art, and the principal would say when he read my name: I don't know why this classmate came to our school. I was also very embarrassed. ”
The revival artists are divided into classes according to "loyalty and filial piety and benevolence", the leader of the "loyalty" class is Lu Lanying, that is, the wife of the Mayday monster, and Wang Yajun is the class leader of the "filial piety" class. "We both loved music, so we became good friends at first sight." At that time, Lu Lanying liked rock and roll, and she knew that Wang Yajun also liked music, so she always dragged her to watch underground performances. "In fact, I don't like very noisy music, mainly to show her the bag." Later, Lu Lanying's guitar teacher was Stone, and every time she got out of class, her sister went to pick her up, and later her sister was with Stone. Later, Lu Lanying has been helping his brother-in-law Shi Shi to make guitar tuning, touring with Mayday, and naturally getting along with the monster. "Now, every time Mayday comes to Beijing on a tour, Wang Yajun, who has settled in Beijing, will take them to dinner.
Don't be a designer and a clerk
Heartache Zhang Shaohan
Write "Invisible Wings"
Based on the sake of studying art, before entering the record company, Wang Yajun was already a designer with a high salary per month. But she has never given up this hobby since she started writing songs in the 6th grade of primary school, "I was raised by my grandparents, and they taught me to memorize 300 Tang poems since I was a child, one a day, so my Chinese is very good." "When she has time, Wang Yajun will submit articles to the record company, until one day, she waits for the opportunity."
On that day, the director of Fumao Records found a room of applicants, asked each person to turn in a piece of work every week, and at the beginning there were still people turning in homework, and in the end, only Wang Yajun was still insisting, and finally was hired.
However, at the time of writing Invisible Wings, Wang Yajun had not yet become a real songwriter. At that time, Zhang Shaohan was a newcomer who had just signed a contract, and Wang Yajun had only been employed for more than a year, and he was still doing administrative work, "that is, buying bento boxes for artists, communicating and announcing, which is basically equivalent to miscellaneous work." However, if an artist wants to make a record, the first contact is also Wang Yajun, "We are responsible for receiving songs, selecting songs, and doing auditions, so at this stage, we spend the most time together." In fact, Zhang Shaohan and I participated in the same singing competition, or the same session, but we didn't know each other when the competition was held. Later, we both found that we lived close to each other when we were young, and we also took English classes at the same school. So we have a very good relationship. "The same is a newcomer, two people are under different and the same pressure," she was filming until 1 a.m. every day, then returning to the company to record until 3:30 a.m., and going to work at 5 o'clock. Sometimes I cry tired in the car. I was so upset with her that I wanted to write a song to encourage each other, and that year my grandmother had just died, and I felt that my grandmother was my invisible wing. ”
Because Zhou Mi met SM
Didn't write a word for SJ but made "MAMA"
In the years since, Wang Yajun has written many classic songs for Zhang Shaohan, Fan Weiqi, Lin Junjie, Guo Jing and other singers. Until he met Zhou Mi, he opened up a new world for Wang Yajun.
At that time, Zhou Mi and Guo Jing both enjoyed each other's music, but the two did not meet. When Super Junior came to Taiwan to work, Guo Jing asked me to accompany her. After the meeting, Zhou Mi said that he had heard many songs I wrote and knew that I had written many words, and asked me if I could also help SJ write Chinese lyrics. ”
At that time, Super Junior's songs were all translated literally into Chinese in Korean, and everyone sang very awkwardly. Wang Yajun, who had never been exposed to K-pop songs, agreed to it and met SM's music production department through Zhou Mi. "Li Shengjie has a song called "Song About You", the lyrics are written by me, this song is particularly popular in South Korea, equivalent to the popularity of "Flower Heart" in the mainland. I had also written Chinese lyrics for the theme songs of "Full House" and "I Am Kim Sam Soon", so the SM staff was surprised to see me and immediately decided to cooperate. Coincidentally that year, Super Junior did not release a film, SM asked Wang Yajun if he would mind writing songs for the newcomer group, and this so-called newcomer group is EXO, which also achieved the first cooperation between the two, exo debut song "MAMA" Chinese lyrics are from Wang Yajun.
Of course, Wang Yajun was also very curious about what kind of people were singing. However, the SM staff simply described the personality of everyone in the group, "some can sing, some can dance, probably such a one-sided description, as to who is, what they look like is not mentioned." After the launch of "MAMA", Zhou Mi also called to apologize to Wang Yajun, "He said that he was sorry that SJ did not release a film this year, and he also wanted you to write songs first, but EXO is also our younger brother group." Later, most of the Chinese lyrics of EXO songs were written by Wang Yajun.
The Korean team pays attention to routine
Inexplicably, the result of being changed words caused Han fans to scold
"In fact, writing Chinese words for the Korean group is a completely different routine. For example, if they give me a song, they will attach a literal translation of the Chinese Korean lyrics, and they will ask for basically the same. But if they couldn't change the order according to their requirements, the grammar didn't make sense, and I was crazy. ”
In fact, when Wang Yajun wrote the lyrics Chinese "MAMA", the Korean team had already designed how to shoot the sub-shot of the song MV. "Koreans write lyrics differently than we do, they are better than stories, whose stories are better, whose lyrics have pictures, they care more about the visuals, and what we care about is the content." Of course, working with the Korean team, there are many places that make Wang Yajun collapse, "They will set up in advance, what function each song has, like EXO only has two or three songs to allow me to play freely." 」 I suggested to them at the time that if you want to open up the Chinese market, you still have to write some grounded words and stories. The Korean fast song is always 'I love you, you love me, tonight we are together to night baby', very boring. But they are difficult to change, and change the lyrics do not tell me, when the song was released, the MV came out, I saw that the lyrics have been changed beyond recognition, it is a breath of cool air. I asked them a few times why they changed these words, and they told me that because I read the online translation on the Internet, I thought it was smoother to change it to this way. ”
Wang Yajun also carried a lot of anger and insults from Chinese fans, "because Korean fans are very excited, sometimes they will scold the wrong people, and some of them are not written by me and come to scold me." ”
Comparatively speaking, what impressed Wang Yajun the most was Chi Changxu, when she saw Chi Changxu, the other party would ask Wang Yajun in turn what kind of song she thought she should sing. "They know very well that if they want to enter the Chinese market, they have to listen to our opinions. And he was very serious, after finishing the film, he drove back to Seoul for two hours, let me give him a lyrics lesson, teach him pronunciation word by word, record it with his mobile phone, go back to practice again, so his Chinese singing is particularly accurate. ”
Never thought of being able to "witness" Rain's love
In wang yajun's words, Rain is his idol since childhood, "I will go to see every concert he gives." And she never imagined that years later she would be able to compose Chinese lyrics for her idol's marriage proposal song. In fact, this is not the first collaboration between Wang Yajun and Rain, the Chinese lyrics of "Cara Lover" were created by her. This time, Rain's company approached Wang Yajun before proposing, hoping she would write lyrics for "The Best Gift." "This song originally had Korean lyrics, and when I watched it, I felt as if I was proposing, but I didn't expect it to be."
Deciphering Korean star-making culture
● South Korea is a trainee system, and all departments will meet collectively to discuss every detail before the release of the film. Each angle of each artist is particularly well controlled, and it will be as fine as a certain angle of the artist, such as the 45-degree side face is the most handsome, and you must maintain this angle when you appear in various places in the future.
● Market research is done every year to see what kind of idols are needed in the current market, groups of several people, and the roles of each person in the group are also set in advance.
● When EXO first released the film, you will find that only the captain is speaking, the captain says "we are", and then everyone only speaks one word "one", completely do not let them speak Chinese, once they speak Chinese they break the work, Hunan dialect, another dialect, instant lethality is gone.
Back to music, our demos are often a simple processing of a guitar, but the demos they do are like a complete song, and the arrangement and recording have reached the standard of distribution.
Written by Zhang Kunyu, a reporter from the Beijing News