#singer gg

Disclaimer: I'm going to try to be as gentle as possible, but if you've been reading my blog for any amount of time you know that sometimes I get frustrated and that shows through. Just a reminder that I'm human and incapable of superhuman feats of restraint. I'm also autistic so already naturally prone to being blunt. I do my best to be respectful and kind but somehow I still end up being seen as an asshole by a lot of people. Haters, here you go! More evidence of how much of a dick I am! 🎁

Also, before anyone sends me messages saying I'm being manipulated/deceived, I'm going to state up front that I'm assuming good faith on the part of Anon, rather than reading them as an anti trying to stir up drama. I know I'm often naive about these things, but I believe in Anon's sincerity.

The ask

I'm not going to publish the ask itself because it's long and contains ideas I don't want play a part in spreading, and links to content I don't want to link to.

I will try to paraphrase instead.

In point form:

Anon is wondering about audio discrepancies between the raw video from GG's performance of Go Ahead on the night of the new year's gala and the video that they believe was shared on XZ Studio Weibo account.

Anon says the studio wanted to 'touch up his singing' before posting the performance.

Anon goes on a side quest about netizens posting celebrity 'epic fail' videos, and shares a link to one about GG's performance, claiming it was the only one they could find critiquing him negatively. Anon expresses surprise about that.

Anon refers back to when I said this was his first new year's stage in 5 years, and says the other two songs were difficult vocally but a song from his own album was the worst performance (although they frame all three performances as subpar).

Anon compares this performance of Go Ahead to the performance where GG had a sore throat during a fanmeet and struggled to sing Wuji.

Anon does some hand-wringing about GG's health, wondering if he's sick or overworked.

Anon returns to the side quest about 'epic fail' videos and claims that most commentary only discussed short excerpts from the performance where he was on pitch, praising his performance, rather than discussing the performance in its entirety.

Anon ponders whether netizens are being prevented from discussing the rougher parts.

Anon questions whether videos of his previous performances over the years were edited to sound better than they actually were.

Anon concludes with a conspiracy theory about the studio trying to suppress any negative takes on GG's performance and prevent criticism of him, while considering the possibility it's 'the power of fans' preventing people from ripping him to shreds.

Another final bit about his health.

I think that covers it accurately. I intentionally left out some things I felt uncomfortable posting, but I feel I've been faithful and accurate about your core claims/statements. Anon, feel free to correct me if I got anything wrong.

I'm going to start by itemizing some of Anon's assumptions:

GG's performance was an embarrassment.

The audio in shared video was altered.

Any discrepancies originated from the studio.

The studio wanted to retouch the audio before sharing the performance.

Any alterations of the audio would be unethical.

The discrepancies between the audio from the raw live footage and the audio from the clip shared the following day are dramatic enough to warrant a lot of shock and confusion.

One should expect there to be a lot more 'epic fail' videos about his performance.

(Heavily implied) A song from his own album should be better performed than the other two, which (implied) he would be less familiar with and which were more difficult vocally.

He might be sick.

If people are only discussing 'the good bits', it must be because the studio is preventing them from doing otherwise.

It's possible all his previous performance videos were edited.

The studio has the desire, the power and the capability to quickly mobilize to suppress any negative discussion or critique of GG's performance*.

*Young grasshopper! 😅

I'm actually glad you wrote me about this, Anon, so no matter how I critique your perspective, don't feel bad. If these are the thoughts swirling through your head, I'm glad your instinct is to question them.

The video

If anyone wants to compare for themselves, both versions are available on my blog.

The raw live footage of Go Ahead and Just Dance, ripped from the livestream and shared by fansites moments after the performance

The performance of Go Ahead that was shared by GG the next day (XZ Studio shared Gezhi Town and Just Dance, but it was GG himself who shared Go Ahead - not the studio as Anon claims).

Anon seems to have missed the fact that the video shared by GG is actually Dragon TV's video of the performance. Here's Dragon TV's post.

My thoughts

I found your perspective a bit surprising, Anon. Perhaps you don't watch a lot of live performances and are unaware of how common it is for things to be less than perfect. It's live! It's incredibly common for truly live singing to be off pitch at times*.

This is particularly true with these kinds of galas and celebrity events such as the ones we see in China, because the performers tend to be primarily actors who don't have a lot of spare time to train as professional singers. Most only have a day or two away from their regular schedule to prepare.

*It's a big reason why so many of the top pop artists internationally do not perform fully live, but instead rely heavily on backing tracks for their mega concert tours. Human bodies are not machines, and it's unrealistic to expect every artist to perform perfectly every single night under stressful tour conditions, while executing complicated and physically demanding choreography. The bigger the star, the bigger the audience expectations are. Concert goers will not accept anything less than a stellar performance every night.

It's also important to consider live events in general, and the amount of coordination that needs to happen behind the scenes to ensure that settings and equipment are operating optimally for each individual performer and song. There is no 'one size fits all' setting on the soundboard. There is a reason why each artist has separate rehearsals and sound checks.

When things go wrong in a multi-song set it usually happens early on, when both the singer and the sound technicians are adapting to the situation in the room. If the singer can't hear themself well and the sound technicians are struggling to get the audio mix right, it can take a bit for everything to settle.

In situations like that both the singer and the audio team will be making adjustments in real time, while everything that's happening is broadcasting live.

This happened during GG's most recent prior performance at Dragon TV, when he was singing Wild Child. His in-ear monitors were not working and the opening moments of the song reflected that. It took a bit for the situation to be corrected. I re-posted that video recently, you can find it here.

If you listen to the raw live video you should be able to hear how awful the audio is during pretty much the entirety of Go Ahead (and for most of the night, to be fair, but for some reason Go Ahead had especially atrocious sound). You can barely hear the music, and it seems to keep fading in and out erratically. It's not clear that GG can even hear the backing audio at all.

Contrast that to Just Dance, which immediately has clearer and better audio. I think it's very possible there were some technical difficulties happening with Go Ahead. Technical difficulties that Dragon TV decided to correct in the audio before posting that performance on their Weibo (which GG then shared).

Because I do not believe the audio was actually 'altered' or 'retouched' in the way you claim. I think it was just remixed to put the backing track more forward in the mix. You can still hear GG's shaky voice at points and even a couple of the pitch issues, but you can also hear the music very clearly and loudly - which isn't true for the raw livestream footage.

For those who are unaware of how that works, for high stakes live events like this there will generally be a backing audio track running alongside the live performance that includes prerecorded elements that - depending on the performance - might stand in for missing instruments or performers (an orchestra or backing vocals when those aren't available, for example), help boost and enhance the quality of the sound, provide fills and sound effects, or keep the vocals going when the performer is doing difficult choreography that prevents them from singing optimally. The sound technicians can quickly bump any element up in the audio mix as needed, or if something goes really wrong during a live event.

This is why a lot of pop artists accused of lip syncing are technically able to say that they are not lip syncing. They may be singing live, but their pre-recorded lead vocal is being leaned on very heavily so that they do not have to rely entirely on their live performance. The pre-recorded vocal just gets bumped up in the mix to be louder than the live vocal, which is why some of these artists miraculously manage to sound exactly the same live as they do on their album. 😅

And it's important to remember that the audio that comes straight from the microphone into the board is going to be clearer than the audio that you hear in a livestream. His vocal was likely much better than it sounded in the broadcast, and the remix before posting it online would have reflected that.

The thing is, no matter what you think of his performances, GG performs live. He gets up there onstage and he sings live from beginning to end. That takes a lot of guts, particularly for someone who was not professionally trained as an idol or live performer, but entered the industry as a talented amateur.

And I was saying this to a friend the other day, but I think all of us get so used to seeing GG on glossy billboards and high production value ads, on our TV and movie screens, and headlining on big stages like this, and we forget that he is a socially anxious introvert.

I don't think GG was sick the night of his performance. I also don't think his performance was a train wreck like you seem to think it was. Yes, he was pitchy at times during Go Ahead, but it was only true for that one song. The other two songs were pretty solid.

And despite a few flat notes here and there, his performance of Go Ahead was moving and captivating because of the obvious sincerity and emotion that went into it.

And this is where I need to push back on another one of your assumptions, Anon. You seem to think that a song from his album should be more cleanly performed than songs that are of lesser familiarity to him, but you don't seem to have considered that a song from his album would hold much more meaning for him than the others.

Both Ghezi Town and Just Dance were group performances of songs that were upbeat and dramatized, and I suspect they would have been somewhat more detached from his personal emotional reality than Go Ahead.

Think about that massive stage. It was enormous. He stepped out onto that stage to a lone microphone stand, surrounded by a sea of red and yellow, to perform a song that he has said in interviews meant a lot to him.

When I saw him stepping out onto that stage, my heart was in my throat. I suspect his heart was also in his throat (where it would be blocking his breath and voice).

He's going out there on New Year's Eve for the first time in 5 years on the eve of 2026, to a sea of red and yellow, with millions of viewers around the world anticipating - and, in fact, longing - to see him perform live. The expectations are massive, particularly for a song from his very successful solo album. Your own ask perfectly demonstrates how high the expectations were.

He was performing a song that has deep personal significance to him, in a setting and at a time that is strikingly fitting for that song, which would only lend more emotional weight and significance to the situation. (And I feel the need to point out that Go Ahead is much more difficult vocally than the other two songs he was performing that night.)

He was nervous. Wouldn't you be?

Didn't you hear the nervousness in his first notes? His voice was literally shaking.

I'm sure the fact that he doesn't perform very often would likely contribute to his nervousness. A fancam even caught him appearing to do a little prayer before going onstage*.

*I don't want people to run away with this and believe he was unprepared or not up for the challenge. Quite the contrary. He stepped up to that microphone without any hesitation, and he sang his heart out.

He was also very emotional.

GG can be an emotional guy, and when he's performing sometimes it's hard for him to hold himself together throughout an entire song. We saw this during his Tencent 'sea of red' performance after 2/27.

Rather than witnessing Go Ahead as an 'epic fail' like you seem to have, I witnessed it as a shared moment of emotional authenticity. I suspect most people experienced it that way.

Despite a few missed notes, it was a lovely performance, particularly when viewing the performance compassionately and considering why those notes might have been off. I felt nervous, I felt emotional right alongside GG, which probably helped me to appreciate the performance for what it was.

When you have a hammer

I'm sure you're familiar with the old sayings, "When you have a hammer in your hand everything starts to look like a nail," or, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Basically, how we look at things directly shapes any meaning we attribute to them.

My primary impression when I first read this ask was that your take is uncharitable. You appear to have assumed the worst about the people, the situations and the motives for everything, which led to your theories having that angle.

If I were to have any doubt about the sincerity of your message, it's this tone of negative assumption that would lead me there. It seems like you didn't consider the possibility that the people and situations you were looking into were coming from a kinder place than you imagined.

It might be worthwhile to reflect on that, and explore if there is a tendency within you to be cynical.

It might also just be about where you are spending your time. It's common for people who spend a lot of time around haters to get a very distorted view.

Because from my perspective you have it exactly backwards. Rather than be shocked that people are not being harsher on GG for his performance, perhaps you should be alarmed that anyone at all has chosen to do so (and this applies to any of the other performers as well).

People aren't generally assholes about things like this. I think most people recognize that live situations are live situations, and they pick up on and get swept away by the mood and emotion of the performance rather than fixating on the technical accuracy of the vocals.

Is it unethical to adjust audio when sharing a video of a live performance online?

Like so many things, this can be argued many ways, and reasonable people can disagree on this topic. There are good arguments on both sides of the issue.

Some people might feel that the most important thing is to accurately convey the literal details of the live performance, while others might feel that the most important thing is to convey the live experience while ensuring the performance is enjoyable for those who didn't get to witness it live (and who might not catch the mood and feeling that was there in the moment).

If the audio for a live event isn't great due to production issues on the night of the event (where there might not be much that can be done to correct things without creating obvious, jarring shifts in the sound, and where there's not enough time in a 3 minute performance to make those shifts anyway, and where alterations run the risk of making things worse), is there a good reason why the audio of videos shared after the fact should also sound like crap (when the engineers have full control over the sound quality)?

I think it's objectively true that the audio of Go Ahead was garbage on the night of the event. I don't think it would be realistic to expect Dragon TV to simply post the raw footage as a clip when the audio was that bad. The performance aside, they're a TV network that wants to hype up their events. They're not going to post something that has garbage sound.

The fact that they (or their sound people, or GG's studio... we don't know) appear to have remixed the audio to downplay some of the missed notes or to ensure the actual quality of his performance shone through rather than a livestream broadcast of poor quality and poor sound - that also comes as no surprise. This is the entertainment business, not a court of law.

Such things are a product, and anyone releasing a product is going to present it at its best. This is how the world works. There's zero doubt in my mind that Dragon TV (and all other networks in China and around the world) do the same with this kind of material.

Purists can get pissed off or cry manipulation, but it's not like raw broadcast footage ceases to exist, or could ever be scrubbed from the internet. It will live forever. This is the digital age.

I think the fact that GG always goes up and performs absolutely raw and live is irrefutable proof that he's not trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes or pretend to be something he isn't. He is one of the artists - in China or around the world - who still consistently does this.

As for my thoughts? Well, I'm shamelessly, unapologetically biased. Aside from the fact that I don't want GG to be embarrassed or subject to criticism from uncharitable viewers - or to experience a moment of vulnerability being twisted into something else (and audiences are capable of coming up with all sorts of hateful takes) - I'm also just glad there's a version that is clearer and has better sound.

So many of his live performances have terrible sound, and I'm stuck with it. Magical is a good example. That song lives on my playlist, and I've probably listened to it hundreds of times, but the sound is awful because it's just ripped from the original video (which has bad sound). If Dragon TV fixed the audio of Go Ahead, I wish they'd go back and fix Magical as well. 😅

And like I said, it's routine for live performance footage to be remixed and edited before sharing through official channels. There are some exceptions to that, of course, but when it comes to popular/mainstream shows at that level it's fairly standard globally.

The frustrating irony

As for this performance, I loved it. I thought it was a beautiful and heartfelt, despite a few pitch issues here and there. It was human and vulnerable and raw - and all the more touching because of that.

And I think there's a deep irony here, one that I find very frustrating, Anon. We can see with our own eyes that GG went up there and performed fully live without relying on a backing track. Yet here he is, essentially being ripped to shreds for it.

This is EXACTLY why it's so hard to get a genuinely authentic live performance anymore. This is why so many of the major stars rely on backing tracks to some extent (yes, your fave too, don't kid yourself).

I think he is to be applauded and respected for the effort he made. Especially after the last appearance he made at Dragon TV, where technical issues plagued his performances.

As I already pointed out, most people are not going to spend a lot of time online ripping into someone who gave a heartfelt performance on an exciting night of celebration. Most will look beyond any flaws and take stock of the situation and mood, and discuss the highlights and their experience of viewing the performances rather than critique a performer harshly.

That aside, his fans are very loyal and he is a top tier celebrity. While that exposes him to broader audiences and to more criticism, it also means there are a lot more people out there who are going to discuss his performance from their perspective as someone who supports him.

If anyone is actively 'influencing the narrative' about GG's performance online (and I don't think there's any real evidence of that), it would be the fans, not the studio.

I only WISH the studio had the kind of power you seem to think they have to suppress hateful stories about GG online. Had they that power, 2/27 would never have happened.

GG and his studio have repeatedly, repeatedly made it clear that people are free to like or hate, free to be critical or supportive. It's practically a mantra by now. They aren't out there 'suppressing negative voices', Anon.

In Conclusion

I know this was a really long answer to .... an equally long question, but I wanted to be thorough and clear.

I also think it's valuable for people to see the thought process. It is always my goal to help foster critical thinking skills/instincts among others to the best of my ability, and to encourage people to question things and look at them from different angles.

If there's anything the world needs now, it's stronger critical thinking skills, better media literacy, tougher intellectual self-defense, and more compassion and understanding. While I don't claim to be a mystical guru on any of these topics, I do think the more we see each other's thought processes, the better informed and more generally understanding we'll be.

At the end of the day, we got to see GG perform live on New Year's Eve for the first time in 5 years. We got to see him perform one of the songs from his album. We got to celebrate 2026!!!

Nothing happened in connection with any of it that I think warrants this degree of concern or suspicion. 2026 should be celebrated. GG should be celebrated. This performance should be celebrated.

But you're free to make your own choices.

Edit: Based on some of the comments, I think maybe I accidentally mischaracterized Anon a bit when I removed the context of their message to me. I was trying to get to the meat of their message, but of course the tone was lost when I did that.

To be clear, the overall message from Anon was not harsh or seeking to validate a harsh take on his performance. Rather they seemed to have experienced the performance as poor and were expecting more backlash because of it. That is a subtle but real distinction.

I did not see any malice in anything Anon said, it just felt like they were coming from a specific perspective that maybe prevented them from seeing a fuller picture.