#yo!bang

[YO! BANG] You Zhangjing reading a very extra fan letter

featuring very meme-worthy reactions by Bu Fan + Fan Chengcheng + Zhu Zhengting (cut from YO! BANG Ep. 10)

ZHANGJING IS THE CUTEST BEAN!! watch till the end for his adorable laugh at fcc’s meme face and bufan struggling to control these crazy kids. 

(Original article by Zou Xiaoying, posted to Weibo December 19, 2018. Translation by 玉儿 YUER. Links for reference added.)

With his explosive hair [afro], a purple velvet suit with a black turtleneck sweater inside, a stage behind him resembling a club from the eighties, and microphone stand in front of him that allows him to freely move around, he steps into the modern world with his shiny leather shoes-- Wu Jiacheng walks towards us with “Mystery”.

The first time I heard about Wu Jiacheng, of course it was through X NINE. Around the time they debuted, a friend of mine who distributes records showed me their music and asked me: “What do you think about this group?” At that time, my friend said this which stood out to me: “This is their leader and main vocalist Wu Jiacheng, he’s also from Guangdong like us, and graduated from Xinghai Conservatory of Music. His singing and looks aren’t too bad.” Just like this, I remembered the name “Wu Jiacheng”. Then, he and his members grew together, often seen shining in each variety show they were on up to now. Currently the focus is more on individual music releases, as Wu Jiacheng performed his new song “Mystery” on the latest episode of “YO! Bang”.

When I first heard this song, I was shocked. The surge of the bass combined with the synth gave off a fantasy-like feeling. In the past, we would hear these musical elements in New Pants’ or Zhang Qiang’s songs. However, Wu Jiacheng uses “Mystery” to tell us that retro and disco are not owned by anyone. After a squeaky clean verse, without further ado, he charges into the chorus of the song: “You said you can’t give it to me, it’s that mystery of love”. Xiao Wu again uses that squeaky clean but edited mixed voice, while keeping its emotional touch. This brings about a smooth transition at the end of the chorus: “Your mysterious thoughts are obscure, it puzzles my brain, but I have to keep up with it”. This line lifts up the song into a new light; it’s in a higher range, but Xiao Wu is still able to demonstrate his singing abilities. It’s full of emotion, and his voice moves people.

As a typical retro and disco song, “Mystery” progressively layers onto itself with more tension using its emotion. Although nostalgic songs have been popular in the music world throughout the past year, especially synthpop, Wu Jiacheng’s “Mystery” not only contains all the distinguishing qualities from the disco sound of the 80s, but maintains the reverberating and elegant vocal tone resembling the singer Donna Summer. This kind of fighting spirit represents the 80s Zeitgeist and is the essence of disco, and Wu Jiacheng has precisely captured this to the core, with his rhythm under a strong 4/4 time signature.

This in fact is not Wu Jiacheng’s first time dancing into the retro world. Before this, his other song “A Docile Cat” was more orchestrally arranged, constantly repeating “I just want to be a docile cat” in the chorus, and was already very much a disco song to a high degree. I often tell people, if your foundations for singing a song aren’t good, focus on singing slow ballads and that should be good enough. Don’t take the easy way out by singing something more upbeat, because for Chinese singers rhythm is something that requires long-term practice in order to master it. Dance music, specifically disco music, places great emphasis on live performance. It is a genre of music that infects the atmosphere, so singers must “ignite themselves” to externalize their inner passions into the rhythm of the song. For Xiao Wu, his family ran a cassette tape shop, and so he was influenced by the Hong Kong and Taiwanese pop music scene that was popular in the city he grew up in. Guangdong is the birthplace of discotheque in China, whether it was the foreign “Brave Warrior” back in the day, the new wave leading to the birth of “Monica” by Leslie Cheung, “Opening the Iceberg” by Anita Mui, and “Indifferent to Samba” by Grasshopper, or us waiting for Chinese songs similar to songs from The Way We Dance, Wu Jiacheng was influenced by all that he had heard. To add on, he decided to study at a music college later, having the ability to display the beautiful nature of retro and disco, which is unsurprising.

For “Mystery” and its implementation of this retro style, Wu Jiacheng believes that “it [retro] is not just a thing of the past, but it is something that can still become popular in the present day.” We often assume that young people lack respect for old traditions, but that is actually not the case at all. Wu Jiacheng worked with producers from the American sector of BMG to create his music, writing the Chinese lyrics himself to interpret what pop music is in his mind, while simultaneously maintaining a disco style. He also decided to get straight to the point, clearly stating his ideas on how he’d like to express himself. Every generation has something new that represents it, but this does not mean that these older generations will lose their value once new things are birthed. Instead, as time passes by, the value of the “retro” that we talk about is not just on what it appears to be on the outside, but it’s more about its value as a whole. It was a product of the past, but it is also an irreplaceable Zeitgeist in the history of human civilization. In Wu Jiacheng’s fiery eyes, I can see that the messages he wants to convey [in his music] stem from the simple and sincere time of the 80s.

Therefore, don’t keep asking Wu Jiacheng why he wants to do disco. He’s just passionate about it.

181126 - Weibo

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