天赐的声音 S3 EP1-3
Apr. 2nd, 2022 08:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tanithryudoThis is the music variety show that Zhou Shen is currently participating in. There's 12 episodes total, recorded in batches of 3. Two recording sessions have already been completed (6 eps), and 3 have been broadcasted. The next recording session scheduled for the middle of the month (running a little tight there). Zhou Shen is one of the permanent cast members this season, meaning he gets 1 performance per episode (except for sitting out on ep 4, due to scheduling issues). All of the songs on this show are collaborative stages, and the songs are mostly covers of other well known or popular songs.
The first batch of 3 eps are predicted to be the better works of the season, by dint of the fact that the temporary cast members who participated are of higher quality (and higher fees/position in the industry, which is why they're all going first). So I figure I'd do a listing of the first 3 songs now.
EP1.《克卜勒》 (aka "Kepler") - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIEY-zmrRVs
Very pretty song and a good opener. Zhou Shen creates the imagery of "outer space" with his voice very well, with previous well known works in the genre like 《末日飞船》 and 《卡西尼/Cassini》. Though, I guess it's precisely because he has excellent (I would even say, better) works in the style, that this one feels a little...standard fare, I suppose. It still stands alone very well as a good song.
EP2. 《算你狠》- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlGn6ifnXg4
Or as I'd like to think of it: "The Artist While Drunk", LOL. This was obviously a work where ZS went in to play with music, and you can tell he had fun. There's so much elements crammed into it, but none of them feel like they're out of place. The small opera portion skyrocketed in popularity on douyin. The parts where he sang in Guizhou and Hunan dialects makes me just a little jealous cuz I can't even speak in Nanjing dialect anymore. On first impression, you'd think this was a one time curiosity stage performance, but surprisingly the underlying music is very catchy too, and I was able to enjoy listening to just the pure audio of it on loop.
EP3. 《玫瑰少年》- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGc7N1oQJF4
The most meaningful performance to the artist himself, and possibly the biggest challenge to his skills. Zhou Shen's rap ability is...self-admittedly mediocre, but he managed a lot of improvement here. I didn't think I would enjoy this, since I'm not a fan of rap in general. And just watching the stage performance at the time of the broadcast, I did think it was just ok. But later on, again, started looping the audio on QQ and...it was pretty good.
Unfortunately, the last performance seems to raised something of a storm of controversy...on weibo and only weibo it looks like. As far as I can tell, youtube and douyin comments have mostly been peace and love. Douban and bilibili comments seem to be more defending from or mocking the weibo controversy. Yeah.
So the source of the controversy is the fact that the original song for 《玫瑰少年》 is in memory of a 15yo boy in Taiwan who was bullied in school for being feminine, and died due to said bullying. The original lyrics also included a lot of stuff about sexuality, and the song was I guess adopted by the Taiwan LGBT community as their...I dunno, "their song" or something.
For this cover, of course, Chinese media censorship isn't going to let anything related to sexuality of any kind be broadcasted. So they stripped out the main parts of the song and replaced it with rap, primary performed by Gai (the collab singer for this work, who's a popular rapper who made it into the mainstream entertainment industry in China). ZS sings the parts from the chorus that was kept from the original, as well as small rap portion of his own, where only the last line was written by himself (the line that says to be true to his voice).
The critics for this particular work seem to be coming from a few angles/groups/sources:
1. Original Purists - People who believe that any change to the original work is blasphemy. These kind of people show up for any kind of cover performance that becomes popular. Not sure if also includes the fans of the original artist (or just people who claim they are).
2. LGBT "supporters" - People who believe the "soul" of this song is for downtrodden "minorities" (by which they mean just LGBT), and that removing the parts of the song talking about sexuality and the line referencing the original kid it was in memory over, is butchering it and being disrespectful of their minority / leeching popularity from the dead.
3. PRC sux - People who decry that the chinese mainland entertainment industry ruins everything it touches. (The original artist/work is from Taiwan.) At first I assumed they're referring to the censorship rules. But a lot of these posts actually feel like badly hidden (and well organized) political commentary.
4. Haters of ZS. Most of these pretty much don't contribute anything coherent and just go straight to "sissy" or "die!"
5. Haters of Gai, who feel he's not worthy to sing this song because...he looks like a punk/bully? because he's a rapper and rappers are punks? because he has some kind of history of being a bully (rather than being a victim of bullying)? Eh. I'm not a fan of this artist so I can't be bothered to do the research behind his haters.
Lots of overlap between the first 3 groups. The last two makes me just shake my head at WB.
Like, the reason ZS chose this song is quite clearly because he can identify with it; from junior high, to his entry into the music industry, to the present day, he's consistently faced critics and haters calling him "娘"/"不男不女". You can't get more similar to the original story other than the fact that...well, he's still alive and flourishing. Anyway, ZS certainly put a lot of emotion into his performance, so obviously he emphasizes.
The original song was a 3rd person POV lamenting the death of a bullying victim. The other change to this cover was that they made it into a 1st person POV singing about enduring and succeeding despite bullying. Both singers are straight guys, so yeah, even without the censorship, I find it understandable they'd take out the parts about sexuality and adding more personalized lyrics.
And yeah, they are both successful people in their careers *now*, but I don't see how that contradicts being bullied in the past or why it means they aren't allowed to sing on behalf of bullying victims. I mean, if we put the burden of speaking out solely on people who are suppressed and unsuccessful in life... eh. Then those words would never get heard. Defeats the whole purpose of spread public awareness.
And then, with regards to the idea that covers of a work "butchers" the original... I mean, it's like fanfiction, or film adaptations of novels. No matter how you enjoyed or disliked the fanfic or move adaptation, that's still a personal opinion. There are good adaptations out there, so a blanket negation of all covers is quite narrow-minded. As well, the original work is still there, if you want that original feel.
It's very telling, and also very ironic that not even a tiny fraction of these critics are hating on the song for any music-related reasons. They all seem to be too busy hating on the singers...
*throws hands*
ADD: After over 24 hours and the flamewar on WB still ongoing, a couple of things are apparent. Let's just say, there's a lot of...water [army] involved than real people, and I really doubt most of the coherent posts are really meaning what they're spouting. Douyin is still mostly peaceful, youtube is supportive, bilibili comments are rallying in defense against the abuse on WB, ditto douban. The various music platforms... well, let's just say for all the people claiming to be out in defense of the original 《玫瑰少年》, they certainly haven't been putting their money where their mouth is (the original song being part of a paid digital album). In other words, if you just ignore that particular WB topic...nobody cares.
The first batch of 3 eps are predicted to be the better works of the season, by dint of the fact that the temporary cast members who participated are of higher quality (and higher fees/position in the industry, which is why they're all going first). So I figure I'd do a listing of the first 3 songs now.
EP1.《克卜勒》 (aka "Kepler") - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIEY-zmrRVs
Very pretty song and a good opener. Zhou Shen creates the imagery of "outer space" with his voice very well, with previous well known works in the genre like 《末日飞船》 and 《卡西尼/Cassini》. Though, I guess it's precisely because he has excellent (I would even say, better) works in the style, that this one feels a little...standard fare, I suppose. It still stands alone very well as a good song.
EP2. 《算你狠》- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlGn6ifnXg4
Or as I'd like to think of it: "The Artist While Drunk", LOL. This was obviously a work where ZS went in to play with music, and you can tell he had fun. There's so much elements crammed into it, but none of them feel like they're out of place. The small opera portion skyrocketed in popularity on douyin. The parts where he sang in Guizhou and Hunan dialects makes me just a little jealous cuz I can't even speak in Nanjing dialect anymore. On first impression, you'd think this was a one time curiosity stage performance, but surprisingly the underlying music is very catchy too, and I was able to enjoy listening to just the pure audio of it on loop.
EP3. 《玫瑰少年》- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGc7N1oQJF4
The most meaningful performance to the artist himself, and possibly the biggest challenge to his skills. Zhou Shen's rap ability is...self-admittedly mediocre, but he managed a lot of improvement here. I didn't think I would enjoy this, since I'm not a fan of rap in general. And just watching the stage performance at the time of the broadcast, I did think it was just ok. But later on, again, started looping the audio on QQ and...it was pretty good.
Unfortunately, the last performance seems to raised something of a storm of controversy...on weibo and only weibo it looks like. As far as I can tell, youtube and douyin comments have mostly been peace and love. Douban and bilibili comments seem to be more defending from or mocking the weibo controversy. Yeah.
So the source of the controversy is the fact that the original song for 《玫瑰少年》 is in memory of a 15yo boy in Taiwan who was bullied in school for being feminine, and died due to said bullying. The original lyrics also included a lot of stuff about sexuality, and the song was I guess adopted by the Taiwan LGBT community as their...I dunno, "their song" or something.
For this cover, of course, Chinese media censorship isn't going to let anything related to sexuality of any kind be broadcasted. So they stripped out the main parts of the song and replaced it with rap, primary performed by Gai (the collab singer for this work, who's a popular rapper who made it into the mainstream entertainment industry in China). ZS sings the parts from the chorus that was kept from the original, as well as small rap portion of his own, where only the last line was written by himself (the line that says to be true to his voice).
The critics for this particular work seem to be coming from a few angles/groups/sources:
1. Original Purists - People who believe that any change to the original work is blasphemy. These kind of people show up for any kind of cover performance that becomes popular. Not sure if also includes the fans of the original artist (or just people who claim they are).
2. LGBT "supporters" - People who believe the "soul" of this song is for downtrodden "minorities" (by which they mean just LGBT), and that removing the parts of the song talking about sexuality and the line referencing the original kid it was in memory over, is butchering it and being disrespectful of their minority / leeching popularity from the dead.
3. PRC sux - People who decry that the chinese mainland entertainment industry ruins everything it touches. (The original artist/work is from Taiwan.) At first I assumed they're referring to the censorship rules. But a lot of these posts actually feel like badly hidden (and well organized) political commentary.
4. Haters of ZS. Most of these pretty much don't contribute anything coherent and just go straight to "sissy" or "die!"
5. Haters of Gai, who feel he's not worthy to sing this song because...he looks like a punk/bully? because he's a rapper and rappers are punks? because he has some kind of history of being a bully (rather than being a victim of bullying)? Eh. I'm not a fan of this artist so I can't be bothered to do the research behind his haters.
Lots of overlap between the first 3 groups. The last two makes me just shake my head at WB.
Like, the reason ZS chose this song is quite clearly because he can identify with it; from junior high, to his entry into the music industry, to the present day, he's consistently faced critics and haters calling him "娘"/"不男不女". You can't get more similar to the original story other than the fact that...well, he's still alive and flourishing. Anyway, ZS certainly put a lot of emotion into his performance, so obviously he emphasizes.
The original song was a 3rd person POV lamenting the death of a bullying victim. The other change to this cover was that they made it into a 1st person POV singing about enduring and succeeding despite bullying. Both singers are straight guys, so yeah, even without the censorship, I find it understandable they'd take out the parts about sexuality and adding more personalized lyrics.
And yeah, they are both successful people in their careers *now*, but I don't see how that contradicts being bullied in the past or why it means they aren't allowed to sing on behalf of bullying victims. I mean, if we put the burden of speaking out solely on people who are suppressed and unsuccessful in life... eh. Then those words would never get heard. Defeats the whole purpose of spread public awareness.
And then, with regards to the idea that covers of a work "butchers" the original... I mean, it's like fanfiction, or film adaptations of novels. No matter how you enjoyed or disliked the fanfic or move adaptation, that's still a personal opinion. There are good adaptations out there, so a blanket negation of all covers is quite narrow-minded. As well, the original work is still there, if you want that original feel.
It's very telling, and also very ironic that not even a tiny fraction of these critics are hating on the song for any music-related reasons. They all seem to be too busy hating on the singers...
*throws hands*
ADD: After over 24 hours and the flamewar on WB still ongoing, a couple of things are apparent. Let's just say, there's a lot of...water [army] involved than real people, and I really doubt most of the coherent posts are really meaning what they're spouting. Douyin is still mostly peaceful, youtube is supportive, bilibili comments are rallying in defense against the abuse on WB, ditto douban. The various music platforms... well, let's just say for all the people claiming to be out in defense of the original 《玫瑰少年》, they certainly haven't been putting their money where their mouth is (the original song being part of a paid digital album). In other words, if you just ignore that particular WB topic...nobody cares.
