Wen / Keith
Editor / Miriam
Every once in a while, I scan the Internet to take an inventory of videos from the peak of the Chinese music scene.
No one can tell whether the peak was in 2003 or 2004, but in those years Unification was called the Battle of the Gods of Chinese Music, and the song was a golden song in the hearts of the post-80s and 90s.
There are millions of views, and countless people miss their youth here.
In the blink of an eye, 20 years flashed before our eyes so brightly.
I suddenly found that most of the teenagers who sang on the stage were struggling with negative news:
Collapse of a house, disappearance of a house.
Ah Xin, after two years, he will be old enough to know his destiny, but he is deeply involved in lip-synching.
Wang Leehom, from a high-quality idol to a "scum man" who failed his family.
Luo Zhixiang, notorious "Master of Time Management";
Jay Chou is no longer the superstar of "Nocturne", but a 45-year-old baby who lingers in European amorous feelings and writes youth pain lyrics by hand.
The idols of that year are experiencing a cruel midlife crisis together with the Chinese music world.
The bad things that happen to ordinary people in middle age will only get worse among the stars:
The fat figure is out of shape, and the hairline is obviously backward, which is just the provocation of the years.
On the other hand, he is greasy, and it is clear that it is difficult to transform his career, but he still keeps saying, "Brother is the first."
Personal life is surrounded by divorce and infidelity, and the middle age of the rich have to face the temptation from pornography, alcohol, drugs and gambling.
It can only be said that the world is fair, and no matter you are rich or poor, you cannot escape the indiscriminate attack of the midlife crisis.
And the strong feeling of this kind of attack will become more intense with the arrival of the New year.
The idol is middle-aged, the image is no longerTime goes back to the beginning of this century.
At that time, the immortals of Chinese music fought, and most of the singers in the ring came from Baodao.
On the male singer's side alone, there are Jay Chou, Wang Leehom, Luo Zhixiang, David Tao, Pan Weibo, May Tian, Soda Green, Fahrenheit and Xin Orchestra.
Although not all of these 20-year-old boys were born and raised on the island, under the baptism and training of Taiwan's record industry, they have become the first batch of music ICON in the millennium:
Their albums filled the downstairs video store, their hot songs dominated the volume-selling KTV, "Hua Tian Cuo" was played all day and night on the streets of the county, and there were always requests for "Happy worship" at the school radio station. Going to a concert on May Day became the dream of countless girls, while the boys walked into the barbershop and tried to cut their hair like Jay Chou.
All this has become the idol cultural enlightenment of countless post-80s and post-90s generation. With the passage of time, the pursuit of Taiwanese male singers has become a golden youth memory of a generation.
But times have changed, and many years later, you have grown up, and your idol has begun to gain weight.
Jay Chou, who used to have eight-pack abs, is now a captive of milk tea.
Ah Xin, who used to be canonized as a Japanese teenager, has already changed into a broadened version of his uncle's face.
For Pan Weibo, who is already easy to get fat, middle age is a nightmare full of big belly and double chin.
On the other hand, Wang Leehom can only shave live to perform what is meant by "Frozen Age Man God".
However, time stole from them not only the beauty and muscles of their youth, but also the once-excess vitality, and even the singing voice on which they ate.
Last year's New year's Eve party, in the face of the famous old song "have to Love", 43-year-old Pan Weibo's extended performance was diagnosed by netizens as "middle-aged, middle-aged deficiency".
Wu Qingfeng, the lead singer of Soda Green, also admitted in the interview that he, just over 40, "broke more and more times, which could never be broken before."
In the past year, Wu Qingfeng has experienced three complete loss of voice, which he regards on social media as "a natural deterioration of age-something that cannot be resisted by all efforts."
This is not the only case.
Jay Chou's fans next door have gradually begun to accept the fact that it is difficult for Little Heavenly King to raise the treble, and try to reproduce the glory of the idol through AI and cover singing.
On the other hand, May Day was once labeled as "middle-aged cutting leeks" because of the lip-synching storm. The social media manifesto of "singing the treble of E6" has become the "last stubbornness" of lead singer Ashin and his voice for 24 years.
And even if a male singer succeeds in his rejuvenation and still sings and dances freely at the age of nearly 40, it doesn't mean he can break the spell of middle age.
Two years ago, the immortal male god Wang Dongcheng sang and danced on a variety show. Then he winked and threw out an oil field, so much so that the owner himself posted Weibo to laugh at himself later, saying, "solve the oil."
After all, the collapse of middle age is never just the collapse of the body.
But suddenly life becomes less and less possible, over forty, you are not becoming anyone you want to be, but just a middle-aged person with average qualifications.
Self-exploration and development have also stagnated, still want to use the axe of youth to please the audience.
But I had no idea that it was because of the innocence and childishness on my face that I was forgiven and tolerated.
By the age of forty, it really didn't work.
Can't get up, can't get down.Marriage expert Huang Weiren once said that when men reach middle age, they always want to prove that they are young, so they will choose:
Wear more leather clothes, and be sure to buy a red sports car.
And that group of Taiwanese male singers in their 40s are perhaps the most loyal practitioners of this theory.
In the interview, these "brothers" who are fake in the sense of age will also repeatedly emphasize to the public that they are still young, are still "big boys" who have not fully grown up, and have not yet waded into the sea called puberty.
Therefore, an old idol will even pretend to be cute and naive.
This mindset is enough to cope with their fans, but not with the nature of middle-aged life, such as the maintenance of a stable relationship.
So looking back at the so-called "disenchantment" of Taiwanese male singers in recent years, you will find that many of their collapsed houses have something to do with marriage and sex:
Wang Leehom, who was praised as a "high-quality idol" by the media in his 20s, was accused by his ex-wife Li Lianglei of "having an affair in marriage and buying sex for a long time" when he was in his 40s, causing him to become a target of criticism overnight, and his career and popularity both fell to the freezing point.
Similarly, in the 2010 report, Luo Zhixiang's character was set as a career-type brother who was hurt by love when he was young, so he was especially cautious about love.
By 2020, with the crusade on Weibo by ex-girlfriend Zhou Yangqing, the chaotic private life of "Little Pig" was completely put on the table, and he also mentioned the titles of "multiplayer movement" and "time management master".
These contrasts are reminiscent of diva Faye Wong's "opening to the Damien":
An idol / just like this / addicted idol / disappear one by one
It is worth mentioning that in the apology letter of more than 7,000 words, Luo Zhixiang, who is just over 40, still refers to himself as "boy", as if his mind is still stuck at the age when he can make mistakes at will.
Equally stagnant may be the creative ability of these Taiwanese male singers themselves.
Just like many years later, Jay Chou, the father of three children, is still in "waiting for you to finish class" and "Don't cry", singing out-of-date youthful love words that can't be understood after 10 years today.
Similarly, May Day, with an average age of 45, has not come up with the creative motif called "Youth", which no longer belongs to them, while Pan Wilber's most popular works are the Korean golden songs he translated when he first made his debut.
For this generation of Taiwanese male singers who "make their debut is the pinnacle", what they achieved yesterday is their bottleneck today.
Their understanding of life, their fantasies about music, and all their yearning for beauty seem to have been sung before the age of 27, while the rest of the time is only repeated over and over again.
On the positive side, this is equivalent to evoking the fans' most precious memories of youth over and over again, and on the negative side, it is like the elder in your family who would say, "your brother and I were quite good at that time."
After all, for these music idols who reached the peak at the beginning, they have long lost their passion to climb the ladder in their careers.
No wonder music godfather David Tao fell in love with heavy riding again at the age of 40, and even if he broke his finger, he had to regain his youthful pleasure in the meat bag.
Because when life comes to a stage where you can no longer live like a young man and can't completely admit that you are an uncle, any man will be confused. Unless the singer can really embrace his old age and compare his music with his age.
Just as Luo Dayou said in "the Trio of Qiang Qiang":
"Middle age is the second part of life, and the most important thing about music is to always face yourself."
Only in this way can the creator draw works such as "Hills" and "songs of mortals" that point directly to the true meaning of life.
Before that, these male singers who grew up at the beginning of the 21st century and rose and fell with Taiwan's record industry will wander in the wilderness of life for a while, repeatedly grabbing their past glory with their hands, and then watch them overflow through their fingers, float into memories, and even cut themselves in turn.
It is sad that stars encounter a midlife crisis, but they can no longer act as ordinary people's projection of energy and creativity. But after all, their middle-aged situation is so barren that there is only money left.
And what about my midlife crisis?
Forget it. I went to work overtime.