任是无情也动人

Zhou Shen has 4 performances on the various new year gala, though not the main CCTV one this year, and then another one on Feb. 2, plus a few other new year related galas that already took place the last few days. I figure I'll roll all of those into one post after the new years. So for now, I'll just post up some other songs that are new and/or seasonally appropriate.

This is his newest release 《出场》, just came out on the 27th. One of the many many theme songs related to the winter olympics. (I remember collecting many many summer olympics songs back in 2008, lol.) This song feels a bit similar to 《无所畏惧》, and I found it to be quite catchy. Unfortunately, its scoring on Tencent's billboard has been affected by 《My Only》, which is splitting off the majority of the fan votes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po6pzH1sGsc

( cut for length )

Digging further back, I really like this performance of 《好花红》 from the 2019 Guizhou CNY. Zhou Shen doesn't often sing in the traditional style (民族歌). This is one of his few official performances in this style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdCQMI-cd-o

Got up a bit before 7 AM today and spent all morning combing weibo and other sites for info and recordings of the 咪咕汇 gala yesterday (this morning US time).

Thanks go out to QQ Music for probably one of the fastest to have recordings (although lower quality) available for direct download, and the large population of China (because the number of people who don't care about copyright increases due to the size of the base population, lol).

I also saw a lot of people on the forums being as unhappy as I am with Migu. I'm unhappy because their apps don't accept registration from non-mainland phone numbers, and you have to have an account to purchase tickets to watch this (livestream!) gala... it's like they don't want the money from the many sizeable foreign fanbases of all the celebrities they invited.

A lot of people who could watch the livestream were also unhappy about huge amount of ads they had to bear for a paid performance. Reportedly some people had to endure a 30 second ad each time they switched camera angles, and that's an eternity in this context. Another recording I saw had an ad obnoxiously show up on the screen every 10-15 seconds, and if they fat-finger the close button, it directly redirects them away from the show and they have to navigate back. Considering these people had paid for the more expensive tickets, it's understandable they're talking about uninstalling and blacklisting the app once they finish reviewing/screen-recording the show.

In light of this, I have to re-appreciate Tencent again. QQ Music is convenient for foreign users even without VPN. Second place goes to Kugou and Kuwo, which I finally got to work using VPN (though I'm just using them for extra 由你音乐榜 votes and sticking to QQ as my main music app). Also, gotta heap extra praise on the TMEA gala last week, for being fully open to overseas users, and for having the performances being all uploaded to youtube so quickly after the show.

Zhou Shen performing a medley of 5 of the Annual Top 10 Hits at the TMEA gala: 《送你一朵小红花 + 不舍 + 如果声音不记得 + 和光同尘 + 这世界那么多人》 (The 2nd to last is his song.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzPkRFpv-NI


( Alternate videos of the 4 songs performed for the Migu gala: )

4.《光亮》from a gala held by Cartier

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eZnJZPWSpk

Today (technically yesterday in China) is the 6th anniversary of 王者荣耀 (Honor of Kings), a PvP/esports game popular in China. And like any self respecting game company (*coughcough*)...in China...they threw themselves a ball.

This is just the intro, in the special stage (stadium?) built just for this party.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eU6nUm1Ycc

I look at this and I look at the likes of Anet, or even the larger game companies in the US, and the first thing I can think of is that chinese meme: “世界的参差”. The second thing is, while asian game companies are much more blatant about blood-sucking the user's wallet... at least the users can see where the money is going?

And the third thing that comes to mind is, indeed, the other chinese meme is also true: 现在游戏公司才是真正的唱片公司 (in this day and age, the game industry is the *real* music industry). LOL.

( Zhou Shen's performances at the gala )

There's also a lot of traditional music performances. My favorite is actually this dance 《敦煌秀》, which unfortunately isn't on youtube. There's also this pipa + spear dance performance and this guzheng + ink painting + dance performance.

Cap off with this traditional instruments rendition of Journey to the West mix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCu0PgtG8bI

And how do they relate to music / music video copyright?

( Read more... )

EDIT to add the video that is still up (the oldest video upload of this song, so I'm guessing it's the primary copyright holder...).

Zhou Shen has been often said to be well suited to Disney style songs, and he had done a few well received Disney covers. Now, he's officially the singer for the Chinese theme song of the new Disney Pixar film. The movie name is "Luca" in English and I think it's releasing tomorrow? Or is it already out? The chinese version is 《夏日友晴天》and supposed to be out in chinese theaters on the 20th.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0zHdpeS9rQ


Other Disney covers he's done before:
Try Everything (MV), the Zootopia theme song, from earlier this year
Let it Go, in 9 languages, made by the singer himself back in 2014, before he even entered the entertainment industry
A Whole New World, a 2019 concert duet of the Aladdin theme song

Somewhat unrelated, saving the link to MangoTV for his 817 gala performance here: 《茧》+《光之翼》 (weibo version)
Links to his 818 gala performance: Hunan/Mango weibo 《大鱼》 alt link

Back to more Zhou Shen songs this time. His newest release is 《江湖缘起》, an OST for the game 《剑侠情缘网络版叁》 (aka 《剑网3》 aka JX Online 3).

Technically, it's the main theme song for the new server the game is putting out, which seems to be a roll back of the storyline to the original launch, but now with more modern mechanics and stuff. (Kinda like if they made Guild Wars with the Pre-searing storyline and GW2 game mechanics, I guess?) Now, I've not played this game myself, but I have actually read a lot of fanfic based on the game or crossed over with the game, and I even have a pretty big collection of previous OSTs for it, so...I feel very familiar with its elements, lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk2cJ3c9Xwg

《江湖缘起》——《剑网3缘起》主题曲
( Read more... )

It's a little special this time because he's also listed as the sole producer for the song (previously, he's been listed as co-producer of a few songs before). Guess he felt confident with the role since he supposedly played the game when it was first released, haha. Also, there's an interesting reaction video by the composer of the song, where she gives some interesting behind the scenes tidbits about how an OST is made.

And while I'm here, here's another OST 《问花》 that was release just a day before the above. This is the main theme of an animated film 《白蛇2：青蛇劫起》, and it looks pretty cool. The first movie that preceded it 《白蛇：缘起》, seems to be highly rated, and is also available on Google Play Movies, Amazon Prime, etc. (And yes, ZS also sang one of the promotional songs for this movie.) Maybe I should watch it one of these days...

Then the week before that, there was yet another OST 《跳舞的月光》 released the week before. This one is the main theme of a movie about high school dance, it seems? Anyway, the melody is definitely fitting to be danced to. (ZS's fans are already lamenting (yet again) about having to split votes among the various music app boards. =P)

I don't think there's an official translation of the song titled《无所畏惧》 but it's probably close enough. The first time I heard this song as I was busy going over all of Zhou Shen's recent works, and at the time, it actually didn't really stand out to me among the sea of his other works.

Then the second to fourth time I heard it, I started thinking that the refrain was actually really catchy, even if the transition was a little awkward. But I still saved it into my playlist. Then the more times I heard the song, the more I liked it. Later when I started looking closer to the lyrics, I found myself liking the calmer starting part of the song too. And today I think I've been basically listening to it on repeat.



This is not the first of Zhou Shen's songs where this happened for me. For example, the same thing happened with 《和光同尘》 from my last post. I'm constantly upping the rating of various songs on my playlist, as they repeat on my playlist and start eating my brain, lol.

But can you believe that this was actually written for a cartoony game? It really sounds more appropriate as the main theme for a serious film or a TV documentary. Or as many users on bilibili have it, for stuff like this... (Huh, seems like you can't embed videos from bilibili here? Or is there something I'm missing?)

One more thing, found this behind the scenes video which I found interesting. Zhou Shen actually sang aloud for the filming of the MV even though he didn't have to (the boy just likes to sing, lol). The video shows that even without a microphone, his voice still carried through the mini orchestra. Haha, I guess that's what a degree in bel canto will do for ya.

Second addendum, found the English version of this song, obviously not sung by Zhou Shen. Man, the difference a vocalist and singing style makes. I wonder why they didn't just have ZS sing the English version too? I mean, he sings perfectly fluent English. (Was he too expensive to hire for two songs? :p)

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.)


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

Recently became a fan of Chinese singer 周深. Realized that the song 《大鱼》 that I've had in my playlist for years now was actually his first representative work.

This boy was classically trained as a tenor in Lviv but more commonly sings as a self-taught counter-tenor. Puberty didn't have any effect on his voice (or height, lol), so his notes can go reeeeeally high, without sounding piercing at all. He hasn't met a language or dialect he can't sing in. He's a pop singer, but he also likes to merge various classical or traditional styles into modern styles.

I've been listening to so many of his songs on repeat the last few days, and even watched a few of the music variety shows that he participated prominently in. Anyway, my absolute favorites right now are...

Foreign languages

《Baby До свидания》 - Remix of 达尼亚 + 红莓花儿开; mix of russian and chinese, classical and reggae...

《Memory》 - Remix song from the musical "Cats". (Supposedly he was asked by the show to sing half of it in chinese and so he came up with his own lyrics for that portion. You can FEEL the emotion he poured into that part, UNF.)
《The Lonely Goatheard》 - That yodeling song from the musical "Sound of Music", and he does voices (and faces/gestures) for all the parts.
《Time to Say Goodbye》 - The...opera(?) song in the italian.
《Zoobi Doobi》 - Remix of a song from a popular Bollywood film, sung in hindi. Also, it's actually a duet with himself. XD (This is a bilibili link cuz I couldn't find a youtube one.)

Chinese

《情是何物》 - IMO his best "中国风" song, based on 摸鱼儿·雁丘词
《相思》 - Remix of the 《西游记后传》OST with a bit of 江苏 folk style as embellishment.
《直破穹苍》 - Actual《斗破苍穹》OST; with chorus segment that sounds like peking(?) opera style (戏腔)
《天堂岛之歌》 - Gothic horror performance that feels like it came out of a musical. Using a bilibili link because the youtube one seems to have disappeared.
《达拉崩吧》 - Remix of a song made for virtual singers. Zhou Shen sings the roles of 5 people in 5 voices, interchanging sometimes in mid-phrase.

Duets/Groups

《爱情转移》, 《天下有情人》, 《野狼Disco》 - A few of his (best) remix duets with 李克勤/Haken Lee. They were partnered for a show and pretty much every one of their songs trended. Their voices (and skillz) harmonize very well.
《卡门》 - Remix of the chinese version of the french musical song Carmen, with a surprise twist in the middle, performed by the quartet 费玉清 李克勤 周深 许魏洲. Zhou Shen of course got the french part. Also, it's funny if you think about the lyrics, but this is essentially four men sing a song dissing on men, lol.

For a news based radio station, NPR can sure sometimes be wicked. Their rendition of a three penny opera about the relationship of France & Germany and the history of the EU is hilarious. Hee.

(Also, I updated the fic rec post with some more entries)