this ain't a love song

No, this blog entry is not about Bon Jovi's rock ballad. In fact, you dislike that song. A lot. So there. Rather, the following is spurred by Anthony's introspection of Chinese ballads, i.e., the 分手以后 (post-breakup) / 爱已到了尽头 (love has ended) / 你不再爱我 (you don't love me anymore) / 我不再爱你 (I don't love you anymore) / 为什么背著我爱别人 (why did you lie to me about him/her) / 不再相信你的山盟海誓 (no longer believe your pledges & oaths of eternal love) / 希望你会永远快乐 (wish you will forever be happy) / 和他在一起会更幸福 (you're, or will be, happier with the other person), etc., types of love songs. You refer to these as '哀怨情歌' (literal translation: 'grief [and] lament[-type] love song').*

This entry is also not about Love, its gain or loss, nor regurgitating the printed wisdom (ahem) of self-help gurus like Leo Buscaglia and John Gray. (Tip: Save your money and read Anthony's musings instead, hah.) It is instead a series of three questions about the Chinese ballad phenomenon: (1) Why is such a high proportion of Chinese pop music of the 哀怨情歌 genre? You do not have statistics to support your suspicion, but most of the hits you can recall are such ballads. This stuff is usually designated as the title and/or opening tracks of Chinese pop albums, receive the most promotion as 主打歌, and is arguably the lifeblood of the Chinese -- by this you mean China, HK, Singapore, Taiwan, etc. -- music and karaoke industry.

Back in the days when record companies allocated smaller budgets -- compared to the present -- toward album promotion, it was a matter of identifying the one or two songs that would create the most bang for the buck. Therein lies the rub, the perennial magic formula: the more Love hurts, the more it sells. Love may be all around, but the 哀怨情歌 is the lynchpin of the Chinese music airwaves. It is nectar for the rejected, many of whom gravitate towards the latest hit tragic ballad, (if) only to inflict yet more torment on oneself. 还不够凄凉, 需要自己折磨自己? Do the lyrics really teach us lessons we have not already learnt? Getting Carver-esque here: If the listener-lyricist relationship is a conversation of sorts, then what is it we talk about when we talk about Love?

(2) Don't they have happier or more pressing topics to write and sing about? Do they -- meaning the songwriters, producers, singers -- wallow in perpetual depression? God forbid, do they actually enjoy indulging in melancholy? Now now, you're not expecting the Chinese to, say, go country and start singing about their old beat-up-but-still-reliable pickup truck / conversations at the bar / the morning after / the town they grew up in / camping, fishing, hiking / their kind of woman, are you?

Well, not entirely. You do admit that the "I'm a little past Little Rock, but a long way from over you"-type of country music also garners a lot of airplay. But there is something about those pickup trucks, something about the town people grew up in. Something about the landscape. And where, too, are the social commentaries? Bruce Hornsby (not a country artiste, but a favorite singer-songwriter), for example, wrote and sang both 'On The Western Skyline' (landscape) and 'The Way It Is' (unemployment and discrimination).

Chinese (singer-)songwriters are incredibly conservative about the range of topics addressed, compared to their Western counterparts. There have been exceptions now and then, such as albums by 崔健 Cui Jian and 郑智化 Zheng Zhi Hua. You hardly think market demand is the sole explanation for the relative lack of 另类 alternative genres in the Chinese music industry. You suspect, but cannot pin down, a correlation with 'structural' conditions like the social / political / intellectual / cultural environment.

This leads to your third question: (3) Is 哀怨情歌 so deeply rooted into Chinese mainstream culture and the Chinese psyche? There are, of course, love songs in just about every language. But you, as a 华人 ethnic Chinese, wonder nonetheless if this has become part of The Chinese Way.

*P.S. 哀怨情歌, when karacroaked to one too many times, may have contributed to a few suicides. Shudder. (The social scientist in you thinks the breakup is the confounding variable. That is, the song does not cause the suicide. Rather the breakup causes both the choice of song, and also leads to the decision to make the last three parts of 生离死别 [birth, parting, death, final separation(?)] a permanent state of affairs.) Warning: This grasshopper is henceforth not responsible for anything that happens after a depressed and lonely human listens to, or sings 黄乙玲 Huang Yi Ling's '爱你无条件' (Loving You Unconditionally).

P.P.S. No, seriously, you think 台语 Taiwanese (福建话 Southern Fujian / 闽南语 Min Nan dialect, to be more exact) love ballads, of which '爱你无条件' is a notable example (see lyrics below), sound much more tragic than their 国语/普通话 (Standard) Mandarin and 粤语 Cantonese (the Southern Guangzhou dialect) counterparts. It's got to do with how the dialect sounds.

爱你无条件 爱我用心肝
不管别人按怎讲 相信我爱的人袂变卦
爱情无条件 缘份全看破
为你牺牲这呢大 甘讲你爱我去死才知疼
啊 我不甘 我不甘 我不甘爱你爱甲将你送别人
缘份还袂完 怨恨己经满 山盟海誓原来是一埸梦
啊 我不甘 我不甘 我不甘得不到你我嘛不愿放
有你是怨叹 无你是黑暗
哪甘目　金金 看你去爱别人
爱你无条件 恨嘛无条件
不管别人按怎看 我己经决定陪你到永远

P.P.P.S. You just thought of 民歌餐厅 music bar-cum-restaurants, where several singers and songwriters ply their trade before finally getting their big break, but you have never been to one, not even '木船' back home. No direct linkage to the subject matter of this blog entry, but worth keeping in mind.