HuaYu97: Starting as a Singer

Chapter 27 [027] Dominating the charts, what a new monster!

"It'll be a hit, right? Qi Yuan's album is selling like hotcakes. Hu Jing dragged me to six stores yesterday just to buy one cassette tape," Zeng Li said with some emotion.

Just a few days ago, Qi Yuan was just a student with a relatively high profile, and was considered to be on the same level as them.

A few days later, Qi Yuan has completely fallen behind them.

To use a line from the song "Small Town Girl," Qi Yuan is now a big star, with a future as bright as the stars in the sky.

Many of them haven't even landed their first role yet, and they're far from being minor stars, let alone major stars.

Yuan Quan and Zeng Li had similar ideas.

Anyone who enters the entertainment industry doesn't want to become famous.

The idea that someone is indifferent to fame and doesn't want to be famous is nonsense. People who truly don't want to be famous would never enter the entertainment industry.

If you love acting but don't want to be famous, you can join a drama troupe or act in plays. Why try to squeeze into the entertainment industry?

Hu Jing's feelings were complicated, even though she was the first in their dormitory to pay attention to Qi Yuan.

Because of her introverted personality, her classmate and best friend Zhang Tong beat her to it.

She's unwilling to give up.

What can we do if we don't give up? Should we say that I'm not here to break you up, but to join you?
No, Zhang Tong is her best friend; she can't do such a thing.

On the way back to the dormitory.

Mei Ting, Yuan Quan, and Zeng Li were discussing Qi Yuan and Zhang Tong's music video, while Hu Jing was in low spirits, uninterested, and not interested in participating in their discussion.

……

After the incident of watching the MV at the Central Academy of Drama, thousands of students at the Central Academy of Drama knew that every female lead in Qi Yuan's album MV was beautiful.

Students at the Central Academy of Drama weren't the only ones to have noticed this.

The same is true in other parts of the country.

People who couldn't buy cassette tapes and were forced to pay extra for discs found they had struck gold.

Qi Yuan's songs are beautiful, and all the female leads in his music videos are gorgeous. Watching beautiful women while listening to his songs is a double treat for both the eyes and ears.

Through word of mouth, Qi Yuan's CDs actually became bestsellers, even though they were many times more expensive than cassette tapes.

Did you buy Qi Yuan's record?

"Yes, I bought it. I was one of the first to buy it, okay? I bought the cassette tape. The songs are all good, they're really nice to listen to. My favorites are 'Starry Sky' and 'Simple Love,' they have a real youthful romance vibe."

"Why buy tapes? You're losing out big time. Buy discs instead. Every girl on Qi Yuan's disc is gorgeous; any one of them could be the school beauty."

"Really? If you're going to say that, I'll have to buy a disc to keep as a collector's item."

……

The positive impact of the record's huge sales was quickly reflected on various music charts.

Four songs, "Small Town Girl," "Starry Sky," "Simple Love," and "First Time," have entered the top ten of the music charts.

"First Time" surged to third place, "Simple Love" and "Starry Sky" ranked fifth and sixth respectively, and "Small Town Girl" ranked ninth.

The first and second place winners are Wakin Chau's "Friends" and Andy Lau's "Chinese People," respectively.

The fourth one is A-mei's "Listen to the Sea," released in June of this year.

It's no exaggeration to say that every song in the top ten is a classic.

Qi Yuan's four songs making it into the top ten is highly impressive.

Soon, people discovered that Qi Yuan's most terrifying aspect was not that all four of his songs simultaneously made it into the top ten.

What's truly frightening is that all six of his other songs are within the top 30 on the charts.

Even the least popular film, "Love at the Corner," ranked 27th.

Moreover, "Because of Love, So I Love" is climbing very quickly, having already reached number eleven, and is very likely to become Qi Yuan's fifth song to break into the top ten of the charts.

This dominance over the charts is terrifying.

Singers in the mainland music scene were stunned.

All ten songs from one album made the charts—what kind of newcomer monster is this?

The entire album surprisingly doesn't have a single bad song that's just there to fill space.

Some seasoned musicians in the industry privately complain that young people are just like that, they don't know how to think about their future at all. If these ten good songs are spread across three or four albums, and the rest are filled with mediocre songs, how many records can they sell in the long run?

Qi Yuan is terrible. He lost his trump card and four twos in just one album. What will he do with his second album?
Do you really think inspiration is limitless? Many singers have a phenomenal debut album, rise briefly, and then fall flat...

……

That evening, Qi Yuan's music video for "The First Time" was broadcast on CCTV-3's "Opera and Music Channel".

The magazine "Audio-Visual World" gave an in-depth review of Qi Yuan's self-titled album "Qi Yuan".

Qi Yuan, a musical genius who brought R&B music to the Chinese music scene, was the biggest surprise in the mainland music scene in 1997.

Below the title is a long article that provides a clear and insightful review of ten songs from Qi Yuan's self-titled album.

This article focuses on analyzing R&B songs such as "Small Town Girl," "Everyday," "Starry Sky," and "Love Turns the Corner," praising these new styles of music for their revolutionary significance to the Chinese music scene.

Magazines and newspapers began to report on it.

After "The First Time" was featured on CCTV-3, its popularity soared, pushing "Chinese People" and "Friends" off the charts and propelling it to the top of the music charts.

The success of "The First Time" further boosted the popularity of other songs.

"Because of Love, So Love" has made a strong comeback, climbing to seventh place on the charts.

Looking at the current top ten music charts, Qi Yuan alone occupies half of them.

This enthusiasm was reflected in the record market, further boosting record sales.

In the last three days of the first week after production capacity was restored, more than 400,000 records were sold.

Adding the more than 200,000 copies sold in the previous four days, the total sales for the week reached more than 600,000.

Starting from the eighth day, the sales of legitimate records plummeted, even more dramatically than being halved.

The reason is simple: piracy has taken hold. A large number of cheaper pirated copies have flooded the market, driving out genuine products and taking away their market share.

"I really want to kill those bastards who pirate products." Song Ke was furious as she looked at the plummeting sales figures.

If only there were no piracy.

Without piracy, it wouldn't be a problem for Qi Yuan's album to sell millions of copies in mainland China, and that's a conservative estimate.

……

Taiwan.

Warner UFO.

Zhou Jianhui was dealing with his work.

Warner Bros. headquarters appointed him as general manager of Warner UFO the following year, which was January 1, 1998.

It's only mid-December, and he still has half a month before he officially takes office.

However, he has now taken over all the affairs of the general manager and become the person in charge in a real sense. He only needs to wait half a month to complete the title of general manager.

Zhou Jianhui was in a bad mood; his predecessor had turned the company into a mess.

In the middle of this year, a number of artists under Warner Music Group chose not to renew their contracts after they expired and switched to other companies, causing the once-popular Warner Music Group to fall into a slump.

Currently, Warner Bros. only has two big names left under its banner: Zheng Xiuwen and Aaron Kwok, one of the Four Heavenly Kings.

Zheng Xiuwen was doing well. 1997 was a peak year for her career. In April, she released her second Mandarin album, "Waiting for You," which sold one million copies across Asia.

Last month, they held sixteen shows at the Hong Kong Coliseum, which helped Warner Bros. UFO regain some face.

Looking at Aaron Kwok, things haven't been going too well these past two years. His Mandarin album "Carrier Pigeon," released in 1996, sold poorly. He then returned to his energetic dance music style and focused on developing Cantonese songs. His album "Call of Love" sold 200,000 copies in Hong Kong, but the market for Cantonese songs was too small.

The fact that Mandarin songs are not doing well while Cantonese songs are selling well only shows that he is living off the success he has built up in previous years.

Furthermore, his numerous romantic relationships with female celebrities have negatively impacted his reputation to some extent.

It's no exaggeration to say that Zhou Jianhui inherited a mess. Warner headquarters assigned him the task of reorganizing the business in Taiwan.

If we were to summarize his mission in a more concise sentence, it would be to make Warner Bros. UFOs great again!
After learning about the situation, Zhou Jian was completely bewildered.

With only Cheng Sau-man and Aaron Kwok left, and many singers leaving to switch companies, how can he lead such a team? How can they win?
Look at the team that Lee Chong Sheng of the Rolling Stones is leading. What kind of team is he leading? Can they win? They can't win a single point, okay? They'll be lucky if they don't lose everything, okay?

Just as Zhou Jianhui was feeling troubled, his assistant, who had just returned from a business trip to the mainland, entered his office and brought him a record that was selling very well in the mainland record market.

The name of this album is
May you have a wish!

(End of this chapter)