Evaluation of Xiao Gang

I think Xiaogang's beard is a testimony to his numerous setbacks. I like it. I think his songs are emotional and meaningful. Is there a singer who made it by himself like him?

Like most musicians who make a name for themselves and laugh about the past, Steve Chou talked about the beginning of his musical career: he had a musical dream and talent in his childhood, and it was very easy for him to sing from an early age. However, his poor family circumstances made him have a more difficult growth history than others. Listening to Steve Chou's light words without any exaggeration, he felt a different kind of bitterness in peace.

He said that because of the poor family environment since childhood, his family didn't approve of his ideal, because he thought that artists became famous after death, and they had a hard time before their death, so their parents hoped that he would study hard and thought that studying for science and engineering would be more promising. Just when he was in the third grade of middle school, his mother suddenly separated from his father and never disappeared. Some male chauvinist fathers feel that this is a rather shameful thing, and their hair turns white overnight and they leave home. From then on, his family was broken, and his brothers and sisters who studied in different places began to work to support themselves. Later, I saw media reports that Steve Chou, who attended the Mid-Autumn Festival party of CCTV in Beijing, said that he never celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival, because his mother's birthday was the Mid-Autumn Festival. For their whole family, the Mid-Autumn Festival was not a reunion, but a discrete memory.

Family changes made Steve Chou a work-study student at the age of 16, and he wanted to earn tuition for himself. He said that he had a sense of crisis from the year when his mother left: what should I do in the future? That made him precocious than the average person, but he probably didn't think at that time, and such a sense of crisis has always run through his future life.

Steve Chou, a young man, has done a lot of work. Apart from taking classes and working in the YMCA of Taiwan Province, winter and summer vacations are a good opportunity for him to work and try different industries. He used to drive a taxi with his brother's license plate. His brother drove after evening and he drove during the day. He set up a stall to sell earrings, went to the factory to wholesale raw materials and came back to make all kinds of earrings himself, so that the cost of a pair of earrings in 1 yuan can be sold for 1 yuan, which is actually very good. He smiled and said, "It is sold to mature female guests." Steve Chou, a minor, has worked in a restaurant, as a decorator, an electrician's helper, as a truck carrier and younger brother, and as a swimming coach. He is thin and thin, and he often does some dangerous manual work. However, laughing at the past, he said that he had experienced a lot of experience at that time, and he didn't feel hard, but he was happy, because no one was in charge, and he spent all his money.

In this life, Steve Chou began to learn many musical instruments at the same time, and began to form a band with his classmates. In 1987, he began to participate in the inter-school music creation competition. He didn't achieve outstanding results in the competition. However, he said, "At that time, the competition was going to produce a collection of new talents. It was strange that I was very commercial when I wrote songs since I was a child. My first song was very commercial, so my song became the first title song." The name of that song is Dust and Smoke. It was this song that brought him into the recording industry.

introduced by a friend, Steve Chou entered the record company that was trying to build the famous "Little Tiger", and he laughed and called it the zeroth generation member of "Little Tiger". At the age of 18, he started dancing and other training in the company, and found that the company wanted to be a pure idol group. He was bent on being a "strength group" and felt "very humiliated and afraid of being laughed at". In addition, he thought that it was very troublesome to coordinate with each other and it was not easy to do things. So he bid farewell to the yet-to-be-released super idol "Little Tiger" group and entered another record company.

At that time, Steve Chou was a "very troublesome" newcomer. Generally speaking, it was a good thing to have a company to sign a contract, but he always felt that Steve Chou, whose production was higher than that of a singer, always had more ideas and requirements. When he signed the contract, he asked that he should create his own records, learn to make them and finally make his own records. In his mind, he hoped to have achievements like those of famous producers Jonathan Lee, Bug, Yang Minghuang and Niu Dake at that time. But in the end, some companies didn't think Steve Chou's "trouble", accepted his idea and signed a contract with him.

Young Steve Chou was positioned as a gentle and clean student singer, and quickly became an unexpected student idol singer. The era of "Xiao Gang" began.

Xiaogang with a sense of crisis

"Xiaogang" is Steve Chou's nickname. He likes this name very much. From the first day of school, when every child introduced himself, he wrote "Xiaogang" on the blackboard. When he was about to release his first record, the boss thought that the name "Steve Chou" sounded like an old man, and it was difficult to remember many strokes, so he decided to give him a stage name. There were many names, but none of them were ideal. Finally, he decided to call it "Xiaogang". This name is somewhat different, but it is quickly remembered.

When the second album "Learning at Last" came out, Xiao Gang was very popular in Taiwan Province. The business director of the company came to him and said, "Your records are sold out of stock." Because the owner of a small shop said that whoever can give him a thousand Zhang Xiaogang records now will marry his daughter to that person. At that time, Steve Chou was 19 years old and had no idea about this situation. The company arranged a publicity activity for him to go to a department store in Taichung. When he passed by car, he found there was a sea of people and traffic jams. He was still thinking, "Who is coming today?" I didn't know all these people were here for him. He doesn't know the extent of his popularity, and he doesn't know why he became popular. He just has confidence and thinks that the singer can go on.

At that time, Steve Chou was still studying, and his status as a singer and a student kept him very busy. Every day, he had to consider how to coordinate the time of studying and being a singer, and how not to be expelled from school. Because he has to do propaganda and appear on the show, he is either busy taking time off after noon every day, or sometimes he simply skips class. His school is in the mountains, and he wants to go to the city for publicity. Steve Chou bought a small car with his newly earned money and drove to the city after class at noon every day. In the car, he was busy taking care of everything, so while driving, he had to put on makeup and eat, so that he could record the program as soon as he got to the place.

At the same time, his success made him a man of the hour in the school. His classmates and teachers were either proud of him or coldly opposed to him, but he still enjoyed his success. But being busy and happy didn't make him give up his studies. He thought it was basic to finish the book, and what if the record didn't succeed? From the beginning, he told his boss that he could not be forced to drop out of school. The boss also supported his idea and even helped him communicate with the teacher when he was absent from school. He always seems to have more plans for the future, which he was forced to learn from the year when his mother left.

He said that because he took the road of music, he could not see the future, and he chose this road only because he liked it. At that time, he often heard people say that he was an idol artist and so on, which made him think about what he should do. So he took advantage of his popularity to learn to make music, so that he could continue to make his favorite music when the record didn't work. He also thought that if it didn't work, he could go to a bar to be a pianist. That's the great thing! Think clearly about yourself and you can go on like this.

The road to reality seems to be specially prepared for his sense of crisis. When Steve Chou became popular for three or four years, and the fifth album "Stay with me until the end of the world" came out, this thoughtful guy found the internationally popular world music style at that time very interesting, and simply made such a style record himself, using many elements of China traditional music. Moreover, in order to match the style of his album, he also pulled the music video and photo of his album to the northwest Silk Road in the mainland for shooting. Unfortunately, such pioneering works have not been favored by the market, and the big slide in record sales has dealt Steve Chou the first blow since he entered the record industry. The rise of world music and Chinese style in the Chinese music scene was after 1997. Steve Chou's first music Waterloo took place in 1994.

At that time, he had just graduated from school, and it was time to take the first step in society. This record was also his first record. He and his boss, who had always cooperated well, had a bad relationship because of the failure of the record. He complained that the boss did not do a good job in publicity and distribution, and the boss blamed him for his poor music, so one refused to do it, and the other refused to release it, and he froze there for a year. It was the first time that Steve Chou realized the horror of not having to make a record. He didn't know what to do next, and the direction was completely unclear. So he chose to go abroad to study languages and study music in England. A year of cold silence made him mature and calm. But he did not expect that a more severe test was yet to come.

Days in the Shadow of "Old Enemy" Jeff Chang Shin-Che

Although the sales volume of this record is not ideal, the production of this record and his trip to the Silk Road in the Mainland have brought far-reaching influence to Steve Chou. Traveling in the mainland, in particular, allowed him to see the openness of the world and see different lifestyles. He said that this gave him his own world outlook and outlook on life for the first time, and made him feel that people's unhappiness or what music they need does not depend on the complicated conditions that people usually attach, but a more essential feeling. So, he started an avant-garde move that other Taiwan Province singers wouldn't have, and decided to go to Yunnan in the mainland to collect folk songs. Before, he negotiated with the record company that he wanted to make a record of world music. However, after he came back, the company refused to release this album. So far, the music he collected is still in his hand. He said that his idea may be too avant-garde, and maybe until now, it is not yet time to make a world music record like that in Taiwan Province. At that time, he still passionately believed that making music meant doing what he wanted, regardless of the market. However, the first thing for a record company to be a singer was to consider the market.

At that time, Steve Chou's contract with the original company expired, just as EMI Records, one of the world's five famous record companies, was spreading its battlefield in Taiwan Province with great fanfare. Steve Chou, who was at a loss about his future, made a decision that seemed problematic now. Jeff Chang Shin-Che's agent came to him and talked to him and Jeff Chang Shin-Che about a good deal, and both of them signed EMI Company at the same time. At that time, someone reminded him: "You are so similar to Jeff Chang Shin-Che, and your agent is so good to Jeff Chang Shin-Che. Will it be bad for you to sign this company together?" Steve Chou said: "There are so many singers in such a big company. I don't think so."

but it turns out that this is indeed a wrong decision. Steve Chou and Jeff Chang Shin-Che are "old enemies" in the record market. Jeff Chang Shin-Che debuted earlier and became popular as a student singer. Unexpectedly, he went to military service when he was popular, leaving a vacancy in the market. When Steve Chou signed a contract with the record company, the boss clearly said, "I just want to be your replacement for Jeff Chang Shin-Che." So a white, bespectacled and lyrical campus ballad just like Jeff Chang Shin-Che came out. In those two years, Xiao Gang really stopped the market. When Jeff Chang Shin-Che came back from military service, the first two albums could not get back to the market anyway. Until one day, Steve Chou heard Jeff Chang Shin-Che's new song on the radio, and Jonathan Lee specially created "Love Like Tide", "I heard it, it's over, it's bad. That's when I started running down. " Steve Chou is laughing now.

Singers of the same type have signed up for the same company, and the other side is obviously strong, and everyone's energy is focused on Jeff Chang Shin-Che. Steve Chou also released an album, but also faced with the problem of how to transform from a student artist when he was older. The company positioned it as a cosmopolitan singer and collided with Jeff Chang Shin-Che after the transformation, so the good opportunity would naturally turn to the strong side. Steve Chou's life was very difficult at first, and I felt that the life behind Jeff Chang Shin-Che's shadow was very hard.

He began to think about how to make records with a market. He began to think about what pop music is and what the nature of the record industry is. He said that he found that the record industry is doing commercial application music, and records are for people to listen to. So he began to try to transform into commercial production and determined to be a commercial producer. "My heart is too messy" is an album that has matured gradually in the process of exploration. That record didn't get much favor. I didn't expect the album to sell well in the mainland. The mainland asked Xiaogang to do publicity, but it didn't get a response from Taiwan Province Company, because at this time, Steve Chou was already a singer on the "blacklist" of EMI Company.

Those years were the most painful experience for Steve Chou as a singer. As an artist, he was coming to an end, but he didn't know where to go. His contract with EMI has also expired. At this time, it is catching up with the tide that Hong Kong artists have entered the Taiwan Province market in large numbers and succeeded in succession, and the living space in the market has become more difficult. At that time, the media began to flourish, the singer's publicity fee began to become higher, and the record investment was greater than before. Most record companies would rather spend money to be newcomers than established Mesozoic singers. In this tide, the market value of many famous singers has become very low. In order to make a living, many people have changed careers, some are acting, some are hosting, and so on. Steve Chou, whose record career was almost desperate, was also faced with the choice of survival. He thought about it for a long time, and finally thought that if he turned to acting and hosting, he didn't like it himself, and he had little chance of winning. He decided to do what he liked best-making records.

He said that he decided to transform himself. If he couldn't transform himself, he would switch to someone else, that is, he would completely transform his artist's life and be behind the scenes. Xiao Gang became a thing of the past, and Steve Chou's musical life began.

Steve Chou was tempered in this way

Steve Chou became a "self-employed" and decided to write songs. He thinks it should be good to write his own songs, and people should not want it. "But I didn't expect that people really didn't want it at first." Steve Chou couldn't help laughing again. Later, he went to ask people why he was not good, and they told him that his demo tape was too crude and rotten to be noticed at all. Among those songs that were retired, many were popular golden songs that later became popular in Chinese-speaking areas. This lesson has made him the best musician in Taiwan Province since then. He has done everything carefully in lyrics, arrangement and harmony before giving it to people. So far, he proudly said, "Just send it directly."

The days of writing songs also made him feel depressed for a long time. Finally, one day, Fumao Records called him to make a transition record for singer Zhang Kefan. He worked hard for half a year. After the album came out, Lonely Bombing became popular, and many people in the industry were asking, "There is a new producer. Who is Steve Chou?" Then, the case of Hong Kong singers Kelly Chen and Xu Zhian who want to enter the Mandarin market came.

Steve Chou found all Kelly Chen's records to listen to, and found out that her voice was better matched with the piano. He collected all the information about Kelly Chen, studied her personality, and saw what kind of songs she sang. He said that only when the singer sang with feelings would the listeners feel. According to Kelly Chen's personality, he specially tailored the song Notepad for her-a song that he once contributed everywhere and nobody wanted. This song made Kelly Chen popular in the Taiwan Province market. This began to establish the position of commercial producer in Steve Chou.

Kelly Chen's records were made in Hong Kong, and the work style of Hong Kong and its business also taught Steve Chou a lesson, which taught him the important concept of cost. The other party did not talk about reception, but only gave an address for Steve Chou to carry himself.