Let's start with their second album, Entertainment Lake.
The second album is perhaps the most important for all musicians, especially self-penned ones, and the reasoning goes without saying. Before the first album comes out, perhaps the musician has been hibernating for five or ten years, spending all of his or her life completing songs that can sustain an album. But when it comes to the second album, the album to be created is never just a summary of one's artistic career, not simply a summary of one's creations to sift through. The creation of the second album has to take into account the opinion of the listener, has to follow the feedback from the first album, the response from the hits. Of course, for some musicians, listeners' opinions don't matter at all, but what they have to live with, though, is their listeners' dissatisfaction and ridicule of them.
When the first album came out, listeners didn't have a preconceived notion of the musician's style, and it didn't matter what the record ended up sounding like, as long as the quality was good. But when the second record came out, we have a preconceived notion of the musician's expectations, and hope that it will provide a strengthened and upgraded version of the previous work. If the musician starts a new stove, and there is no significant improvement in quality, then as mentioned above, the audience will naturally be cynical and sarcastic about their record.
This was the dilemma for Secondhand Rose when they released their second album, "Entertainment in the Jungle".
In 2003, after many years in the Beijing rock scene, Used Roses released the band's first self-titled album, Used Roses, which combined Northeastern duo and rock, two elements of the style that immediately stirred up thousands of waves in the quiet music scene.
"Big brother you play rock, what's the point of you playing it?"
These lyrics are the question of the day in the rock world. In 2003, when the Chinese record industry was still able to survive on its own, and when the talent show was not yet in full swing, they released a record that could not be sung in a karaoke bar, so what was the point? If they knew that ten years later, the band's performances have become some of the waviest and most flamboyant in all of music, they'd be glad that they had the foresight to make the decision they did back then.
If they hadn't done this kind of fusion style, maybe "Secondhand Rose" would have been crushed by the rock world, or they would have continued to make money with a few hit songs in China's second- and third-tier cities and fourth- and fifth-tier villages. But with their unprecedented nationalized rock, they are still active in the first line of rock, and even become a typical band of rock with Chinese characteristics.
The English bands play well, but also play the British; garage music written by the day excellent, but not as good as the U.S. garbage; electronic music and more, turn over and over or to the square dance aunt to listen to away; even if it is what a mess labeled "Chinese style" all kinds of music, but in the final analysis, it is more of a kind of marketing style. Labeling, after removing the lyrics, and the beginning of the century full of R& B is no different. When musicians' identities cross national boundaries to create globalized music with no regional coloring, when all forms of music are held hostage by powerful cultures and appear uniformly in headphones and stereos, doesn't it seem like a very boring and disappointing thing to do? It would be the worst experience in the world of music if all music had to be appreciated through its lyrics, wouldn't it? Don't forget that music's dislike of words has always existed in the classical era, and untitled music has always asserted itself. Beethoven's change of title for his Heroic Symphony also illustrates the helplessness of music held hostage to words.
But for all those who have no Chinese background, they only have to hear Secondhand Rose's music, and they will surely know that it comes from an exotic place, perhaps from the East or perhaps from the West, perhaps from a small island in the Atlantic, perhaps from the natives of the Sahara Desert. In any case, it is a different kind of music that is fundamentally different from the globalized music that excites people. It's just the power of music, and it doesn't matter if you don't know Chinese.
When the second album was released, it was clear that the folk elements that had been expected were still there. But to borrow a phrase from Liang Long, "No one can deny that this is an era of entertainment, and the only way to cause a ****ing sensation now is to make the audience remember you first." Because of this, the record looks like the copy says, "In order to keep up with the entertainment trend and attract the attention of the audience, "Second Hand Rose" has added many fresh elements."
There's no doubt that added elements, if properly arranged, can make the music itself richer and much more listenable. Revisiting this record nearly a decade after its discovery, one finds that the arrangements are much more listenable than simply a one-dimensional duo as the main focus.
But when the time is still 2006, it's clear that the record is being reviewed in a completely different light. What was that year? It was the era when colorful music was big, when internet singers were on the rise, and when talent singers were still treated as musicians. It was only two years after 2006 that there was the Modern Sky Music Festival; two more years before the Strawberry Music Festival would shine. At that time there was just still the MIDI Music Festival family struggling to stay afloat. It's not too much of a stretch to say that that period was a low point for Chinese pop music.
On the one hand, the traditional record industry had collapsed, and various forms of piracy had done untold damage to mainland music. The negative impact on the consumption habits of mainland listeners has never receded. To put it politely, the reason why the mainland's concept of copyright is so weak is inseparable from the proliferation of piracy. Of course, this can not be blamed on the record companies, after all, they are also the victims.
On the other hand, the market for live performances is still immature. Although there have been a lot of live shows in big cities, nationwide tours are still more of a platter concert format, and concerts, like the ones that are on the rise today, are still in the pipeline.
At a time when the record industry is generally not making much money, Leung said he wanted to be heard by a wider audience, and what kind of backlash that would cause could be imagined.
It's probably fair to say that "Entertainment Kong Wu" is an anachronism. It's brilliant, it's catchy, it's profound, and it's colloquial. But in the climate of the time, with all musicians in a state of confusion and irritation, its gesture of attempted compromise and reprieve became an inexplicable straw man, taking a hit it didn't deserve.
By 2013, when Secondhand Rose's new album One Branch Show came out, all the controversy was out of the way, and everything was just in time. China's music fans were ready for a record as weird and wild as this one, and the country's music scene was big enough to handle the onslaught of stylization.
2013's Ichiban contains a number of songs from the two-year-old EP Lejing.
The earliest I heard the title track inside The Legend of Music was the song "Dance". The opening is filled with all sorts of third- and fourth-tier wild bars, creating a pseudo-live feel. Dance music from the eighties, Mandarin with an accent, and various samples of cheesy internet songs. But when Liang Long opened his mouth, the once-familiar Secondhand Rose was back.
As the title suggests, the whole song has a beat that could well be used as a backing track for a square-dancing mom, but there's a guitar solo at the back, interspersed with secretive and elegant female risers, which makes the whole thing complex and energizing.
Unlike on the second, where there was a plethora of elements, it's evident on this song that Secondhand Rose are more confident. In the previous "Entertainment River and Lake", you could feel their seriousness and reverence for these elements, but in this one, the seriousness is still there, but the self-confidence is overwhelming, and the various elements are at their fingertips, pieced together in a way that, instead of feeling chaotic and cluttered, they complement each other.
The most obvious feature is that, in the "Entertainment Jianghu" inside, when other elements to appear, the duo must be weakened, for fear of overpowering the main; but in the 2011 song inside, the duo is always the main line, the other elements are referred to as icing on the cake of the supporting role. Listening to the recurring theme of "We Will Rock You" in the first song, "Bad Things," you can't help but feel that their rock 'n' roll approach is in their bones.
The two versions of "Fairy" are the same set. The former one used the rock arrangement, the three big pieces in turn, all kinds of ethnic instruments, suona guzheng are also on the field, and even the singing is soaring open voice, making the way to pronounce the duo. And at the back of the song "Jagged Child (Immortal Fall South City Version)" is completely folk style. A guitar makes up most of the soundtrack, and the vocals are subdued, unfolding the inexplicable love story. What the significance of such two versions is, without Leung Lung saying, anyone's guess. But what is conceivable, and what everyone has to admit, is that if Secondhand Rose were to go overboard with the ballads, a huge chunk of China's folk scene would have to die.
So this record, when it came out, evoked renewed worship of Secondhand Rose.
For all the extraneous features of the lyrics mentioned at the beginning, it's impossible to understand Secondhand Rose without talking about their lyrics.
Like the traditional duo we understand, the lyrics are filled with a great deal of the basic desires and darkness that are inherent in the human condition. Simply put, there's all sorts of explicit and implicit language related to sex.
Examples of this are all over the place, in the "String Door" there are "people in the city in the city in the village and where the dream is lost"; "Yellow Poetry" in the "Wife is someone else's good ah, the child is their own pro, the child can be passed on to someone else, but the wife is not allowed ah"; "The Righteous Man" in the "The Righteous Man", there are many examples of this. "; "The Righteous Man", "One, two, three, four, five, the lover is so happy, I rely on you to rely on me, from sunset to sunrise." These are all lifted from the inside of the "one branch of the show", not to mention that there is also "sticky" this kind of direct removal of the traditional duo repertoire of the work, which want to say is also clearly revealed.
But it would be a gross underestimation of Secondhand Rose to interpret their lyrics as being sexually suggestive in order to evoke ****. Going back to the opening line, "Big brother you play rock and roll, what's the point of you playing him," that lyric alone is enough to make this a band that will never be forgotten. Allow some of our artists to get rich first"; "take off" inside
while lamenting "engraved my name on the pager, my soul exists on the phone, my blood used in science, who was thrown on the road first." It is not difficult to see that one of their obvious characteristics is that they love to use large prose repetitions to express their views. And this form is exactly the way traditional opera is used to.
On top of that, narrative is also a feature of their lyrics. This is most evident in the song "Picking Flowers" from their debut album. It's a simple story about a man and a woman who get married and have an unhappy married life. In the end, it's like a traditional satirical story, with a few lines expressing the view on the matter "I say ah girl you don't be afraid,
Who will always be like a flower ah, I would like to sing a song for you, where can I find a natural pair of ah." Thinking about the comfort we give to our friends around us who have fallen out of love, these four sentences do not say all the mother-in-law. The same is true of the same album's "Marriage Announcement".
It's not an exaggeration to say that they're the band that best represents China. It's partly because their music has a serious folk element to it, and partly because it's of such high quality.
What their next album will be like, I don't know. After all, they are gods and I am only human. But I hope that there will be more electrifying attempts to be more psychedelic and a bit more manic inside their next album.