#iamasinger4

Last friday was 我是歌手4′s finals. Really nerve wrecking as I watched it ‘live’. This season’s singers had really good 默契 (connection) among one another which is one of the reasons I watch the entire show and not just the performance. The biggest reason for watching is because of 황치열/黄致列／Hwang Chi Yeol. The first time I saw him was on Finding Sugarman show where he sang a duet with Baek A Yeon. Besides the fact that he sings really well he has a really nice personality that attracts people.

The format for the final round goes like this. After the first round of performance the 500 audience will vote and the last place will be eliminated from the the finals immediately. Thereafter, the remaining 6 singers will perform the second round and PK against each other, with the 1st place going against the 6th place, the 2nd with the 5th and so on. The order of performance between the two is decided based on the number of views each singer has on their ‘live’ stream channel. After that there will be 3 singers that won the PK round will be the top 3 from which the audience will then vote again for the final winner.

[SPOILER] 

Round 1 of the finals was called 帮帮唱 (direct translation means help help sing). So each contestant had to invite a guest singer to sing together. Everybody invited really famous singers like Akon and JJLin. HCY invited Gummy to sing Descendant of the Sun (DOTS) OST, <<You are my everything>>. I thought it was really smart to choose a currently trending song in China and utilising the popularity of DOTS. Singing a Korean song also means that HCY can perform to his full ability and bring out the emotions because singing in Chinese is really difficult for him. How they chose the performance order part was stupid. Like at first each person will pick a phone which will decide who is the 7th/last to sing. After that, that person will pick another person to sing and so on. After hearing the rules I knew immediately HCY wouldn’t have a good placement. Like honestly everybody are more or less connected to each other so why choose someone from another country. Indeed my thoughts came true when HCY became the first to perform. Being the first to perform coupled with having to go against famous guest singers I really thought that HCY could be kicked out of the first round. To my surprised, HCY actually got 2nd for the first round like WHOA. 出乎意料。대박!

Round 1 “You Are My Everything”

Moving on to round 2. HCY had to go up against 李克勤 whom I thought sang really really well in round 1. HCY having the higher view count was able to perform after 李克勤. Did I say HCY’s live stream had a whopping 92k views winning over everybody’s else? Like the next highest was 80k. For this round HCY performed a Chinese song <<王妃>>. It had a lot of Korean songs remixed into it though like EXO’s Growl, Super Junior’s Sorry Sorry and Rain’s La Song and even the dubstep he used in his Immortal Song performance when he performed <<Burden>> by Baek Ji Young. Despite having injured his ribs he managed to put up such an incredible high octane performance. Really hope he’s condition didn’t worsen after the performance. Even after putting up such a great performance, it wasn’t enough to give him the final win. After winning 李克勤 in the PK round he became one of the top 3 finalists but eventually lost to Coco and 张信哲 getting 3rd overall. But honestly HCY’s votes in the final round was super low like he only got 20% of the votes. Even though winning is impossible, maybe a 2nd would be good and like seriously 20% is way too low.

Round 2 “王妃“

I saw this comment on youtube and thought it represented exactly what I felt. “第二輪 唱跳是不錯 但是要選擇自己有把握的歌 例如韓國動感歌 我知道黃致列很有誠意唱中文歌  但語言是長期的累積 並不是短時間就能達到完美 我覺得他這次選錯歌  不然還可以第二名   “第一名"大家可想而知了 因為這個節目從第一季到第三季的第一名 就讓人"傻眼”!!!!!!! 通常第一名絕對不可能是韓國人或是臺灣人 盡管是節目內定 我依然覺得黃致列是第四季我是歌手的"歌王"!!!!“ Like indeed his second performance was great but wasn’t one of his best. He tried his best to sing in Chinese but maybe the inclusion of too many dance moves means needing more time to practice dancing and hence having less time to practice singing in Chinese. His pronunciation was off as compared to when his sang <<改变自己>>. Nevertheless he only started learning Chinese when a few months ago so honestly it was great. Apparently it is actually quite difficult for Koreans to learn Chinese (according to my Korean tour guide) because the language pronunciation is really different. As for the results it is somewhat expected. Honestly even though I wish he could win the competition I pretty much know its impossible simply based on the fact that this is China’s competition. Like seriously why would they want a foreigner to win their competition. Getting a non-Chinese to win the competition would put down their own native singers. Nevertheless I still clung on to that 0.0001% of chance that he could perhaps still win.

Most importantly, he had won the hearts of many people, including me, throughout this show. Especially dancing and singing like that at the finals with his injured ribs. Really appreciate his hard work and perseverance. Hope he can take a short break to recuperate! 파이팅!

HCY’s Round 1 “You Are My Everything” feat Gummy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulBFrRE0STo