One week after announcing she was “cancer free”, the British pop star Jessie J did what any recovering patient would do and travelled thousands of miles around the world to perform for an audience of more than a billion people. On 29 May, the singer-songwriter, whose real name is Jessica Cornish, belted out a stage-rattling rendition of Frank Sinatra’s My Way on the stage of Singer, a hugely popular Chinese singing competition similar to The Voice. She also performed her new song, California, briefly adapting the lyrics to change California…
Tag: Music
‘The story of Hong Kong is the sound of it’: the cross-cultural joy of the city’s Cantopop music
Emma-Lee Moss, a singer-songwriter who released four albums as Emmy the Great, was born in Hong Kong to an English father and Hongkonger mother. She lived there until she was 11, when her family moved to England, one of many who left Hong Kong before its transfer of sovereignty from the UK to China in 1997. Emma-Lee Moss. Photograph: Alex Lake Even as a child, Moss understood the significance of the handover, which returned Hong Kong to Chinese control after 156 years as a British colony. “Thanks to our British…
‘People are exhausted by Blackpink and BTS’: the DIY Chinese bands redefining corporate ‘idol’ pop
Since the regime quashed China’s version of the K-pop industry in 2021, an underground ‘alt-idol’ culture has emerged, championing freedom and experimentation Over the past decade, “idol” culture has turned east Asia into a pop music powerhouse as global audiences have flocked to Japanese and especially South Korean groups. Formed and exactingly trained by big entertainment conglomerates, bands such as BTS and EXO have blown up internationally thanks to bombastic songs, sensational dance routines and marketing campaigns designed to build a parasocial relationship between performers – idols – and their…
‘It’s a nice surprise to be treated like kings!’ Why are mid-level British indie bands massive in China?
When I joined the band Swim Deep 13 years ago, my dreams were much like those of any young musician: to play Glastonbury, to tour America and to hear our music on the radio – all of which we’ve managed to achieve. But what I hadn’t counted on was finding a fanbase in China. Despite us never having knowingly released our music there, Swim Deep recently returned triumphant from our fourth run of shows on Chinese soil in barely 10 years, and we’re not the only British indie band benefiting…
Mindy Meng Wang on the ‘disorienting’ experience of her father’s funeral – and the Chinese cyber-opera it inspired
When Mindy Meng Wang’s father died in 2015, the Melbourne-based musician found herself navigating grief while also organising his funeral in her home city in north-western China. It was to be an elaborate, three-day ceremony filled with prescribed rites, including burning paper effigies, ritualised crying and prayer chants. Looking back, Wang describes the experience as “completely shocking and disorienting”. “There were so many rules for what I had to do over those three days, and so many things that I could not understand,” she says. “People criticised my crying; at…
The Last Year of Darkness review – candid and intimate dive into Chinese club culture
Ben Mullinkosson is a film-maker and skateboarder from Chicago who brings an effortless, freewheeling intimacy to this immersive and sensual study of the underground club scene in Chengdu in central China. The title is enigmatic, but it seems to refer to the imminent closure of a club called Funky Town where his subjects have been hanging out; the darkness is the club’s darkness, which is enfolding and welcoming and reassuring, a neon-detailed night in which nothing matters but youth, beauty and the pleasure of the moment. Mullinkosson is utterly at…
Biden Ponders Asylum Plan, and the Secret World of China’s Hackers
The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter. The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about five minutes. NYT
Universal Music Group threatens to pull song catalog from TikTok in furious open letter
Universal Music Group’s agreement with TikTok is set to expire in the next 24 hours after the companies failed to agree on issues including artist compensation and AI, meaning some of the world’s most popular music – including Taylor Swift, Harry Styles and newly viral hit Murder on the Dancefloor – will be removed from TikTok’s library. In a blistering open letter titled “Why we must call Time Out on TikTok” published on Tuesday, UMG, the biggest music company in the world, accused TikTok of attempting to “bully” and “intimidate”…
Rock ’n’ Roll According to the Chinese Communist Party
The song is one of China’s most influential indie rock songs, depicting a story of despair in a struggling industrial city. But a local Communist Party group decided to rewrite it. What if it could spread “positive energy” instead? A man spends decades working a monotonous factory job. His wife grows increasingly insecure about the future. Their son is withdrawn, seemingly struggling at school. Then a building collapses, and their world comes crashing down. It was a story of disillusionment and hopelessness in the industrial city of Shijiazhuang, and it…
Comedy, Music and Uncle Roger Are China’s Latest Crackdown Targets
The cancellations rippled across the country: A Japanese choral band touring China, stand-up comedy shows in several cities, jazz shows in Beijing. In the span of a few days, the performances were among more than a dozen that were abruptly called off — some just minutes before they were supposed to begin — with virtually no explanation. Just before the performances were scrapped, the authorities in Beijing had fined a Chinese comedy studio around $2 million, after one of its stand-up performers was accused of insulting the Chinese military in…