Culture 2022 3
Xu Zhiyuan 徐致远 - The “reference” of Chinese Music
May 20，2022，with the broadcast of the show "Sister Who Rides the Waves，the “Sweetheart hierarch” Cyndi Wang became popular again by singing her song Love You①. Actually the song Love You is not original，and it is adapted from PAPAYA（a South Korea girl group）’s song，Listen to Me②. And since the last century, many Chinese singers or bands have the experience of "refer" songs from other countries. The famous nursery rhyme “Two Tigers”③ is adapted from French nursery rhyme "Brother Jacques"④. In the end of the last century，the Hong Kong music scene had become popular among Chinese youth.Some of their songs also have a certain popularity now. But after my research, many of their songs are covers, and their original songs are mainly Japanese. It was popular to buy the rights to songs and then cover them. You may wonder why they don't write their own songs. It is because they had a fast pace, and the singers had to release several albums every year, so they had to use other people's songs if they didn't have enough creative ability. Another reason was that communications at that time were not as developed as they are today, so their "reference" could not be easily detected by the public.So this method became the choice of most singers at that time. (Singers do that even now.) And this also aroused heated debate since then. Some people think that as long as the song sounds good, it doesn't matter whether it is original or not. Others think creation should be encouraged. But music is also a manifestation of culture. If we blindly follow the footsteps of others without our own innovation, the development of our musical culture will be limited. Encouraging creation is a need of cultural development. Here are some of the "borrowed" songs and their original songs：Priscilla Chan’s Thousands of Songs⑤ is adapted from Kondou Masahiko’s Yuyake no uta⑥. Aaron Kwok’s Good Times & Bad Times is a cover of kazumasa Oda's song of the same name. And Hacken Lee’s The Red Sun⑦ is adapted from the Japanese band Otaika Man’s famous song，What’s the most precious⑧... In addition to Hong Kong, there are also covers in Taiwan's music scene.