More Shenshen

[tanithryudo]

I was going through my browser history today. Seems like I fell into this pit around April 11, due to a UK pop star doing a rendition of 《大鱼》, as a return "gift" of sorts to when Zhou Shen sang her song 《Monsters》 in the Singer2020 competition. (I wonder how the copyright for that works? Presumably he got her or her studio's permission? I know I saw somewhere that he called up Ilem to get permission to sing 《达拉蹦吧》 at 2 AM or something two days before the round he performed it.) From that song, youtube recommended me a bunch of reaction videos to his various songs, and from there I got introduced to Super Vocal, etc.

I continue to accumulate a playlist surrounding this singer. And looking at baidu, this singer has been in a really prolific phase of his career. There's hopes his second album will be completed this year, and I'm honestly wondering if I'm willing to brave the chinese websites to try and buy it...

Anyways, some favorites I encountered lately.

1. 《This is Me》 - Awesome performance with live orchestra. (Though, according to some of the stuff I read online, the rehearsals were even better, cuz it was early morning by the time the show got to his turn. This is the man who performed 7 songs for 4 TV stations' New Year program, lol.)

Watch on YouTube

2. 《卡西尼》 - Duet with 唐汉霄, the creator of this song dedicated to the Cassini space probe. Awesome sci-fi song. Zhou Shen's voice really brings out the feeling of the vastness of space.

3. 《Champions》 - A fan recorded version, because the official version somehow forgot to record his first line. -_-

4. 《江湖觅知音》 - OST for a wuxia mobile game. Filled with seamless transitions between techno pop and peking opera styles. The MV is nice too.

EDIT 5/23/21. In the course of digging through the comments when ZS put up that last song 《江湖觅知音》 on his billibili account, the lyrics actually form a 藏头诗:

皇天后土不屑一拜
图情图义图个自在
霸歌天下置身外
业火烈烈塑我形骸
谈就谈个恣意痛快
笑就笑个江湖澎湃
中立天地混沌绽开

不枉此行知己同在
胜却问鼎万人倾拜
人间寥寥数十载
生未曾踏不破险碍
一场水中月空落败
场中胜负皆坠云海
醉卧青崖纵身世外

= 皇图霸业谈笑中，不胜人生一场醉

Comments

[cashew]

My only complaint is that, like all modern singers, he doesn't enunciate enough. The clean enunciation that dominated the 80's and early 90's seems to have fallen out of favor for this more...swallowed version that makes it really hard to decipher the lyrics without subtitles.

And this is the same issue with English language pop songs. I do not like this trend. ╮(╯▽╰)╭

[tanithryudo]

I don't think that's as much his problem as it depends on the song. Electronica is in itself is usually hard to hear the lyrics, since there's more emphasis on the BGM.

Like, I have no problems understanding his English songs without looking at the lyrics. Nor with slower songs like his collab with Tenger, songs like 《相思》 and so forth.

[cashew]

Like I said, I think it has to do with this modern trend and style. Which is kind of annoying. It's just what's fashionable and very few modern singers stay to the older style of enunciating.

[tanithryudo]

Ah, I haven't really paid a lot of attention to other modern singers. I guess I tend to tunnel vision whenever I find a new interest, lol. I find the majority of Zhou Shen's songs (that are in english or mandarin of course) to be understandable. But he also does a LOT of OSTs, and it makes sense for some of those to be less understandable, since sometimes OST is more about creating a mood or embellishing a scene/MV.