The anxiety of love: an analysis of recent Chinese popular music

ABSTRACT

Love between two sexes is a time-honored but commonplace theme in songs that it does not seem to demand scholarly attention. Yet, the manner in which sexual love is expressed in Chinese songs today carries with it the deep stigma of the sea change that has been taking place in recent Chinese culture. The present paper discovers that, as a result of drastic changes in Chinese people’s attitude toward sexual relations, there has been a greater anxiety in songs intended for men to sing, as well as those for women, and manifestations of the anxiety of the loss of love are gender-specific. In “male songs,” paradoxically, the anxiety has been more voiced and apparently with more pain, which is one of the key indicators of the profound change in sexual attitudes in Chinese society.

KEYWORDS:

• Anxiety
• male songs
• female songs
• transsexual songs

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the reviewers’ critical and inspirational suggestions for the early submission of this paper. They were very helpful in the revision process of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Zhenglan Lu is Professor of the College of Literature and Journalism at Sichuan University. She works on the research of gender studies and musical semiotics. Her recent publications include Geci Xue (Studies of Lyrics, 2007) and Gequ yu Xingbie (Songs and Gender, 2013).

Notes

1. Among the top 500 popular songs on the Baidu.com, the largest search engine in China, 408 (about 81.69% of the total) were love songs (Accessed October 21, 2010. http://music.baidu.com/top/dayhot), quoted in Zhenglan Lu (2013, 238).

2. The One-Child Policy was in practice starting from mid-1970s, but the law bill was proclaimed on 29 December 1978, stipulating that it should be in effect on 1 September 1979.

3. From the album (太平盛世) by Tao Zhe (陶喆)，EMI (百代)，2005.

4. From the album A Beautiful Day （美丽的一天）by Liu Dehua（刘德华），EMI (百代)，2002.

5. From the album Happier than me（比我幸福）by Chen Xiaodong (陈晓东)， UMG (环球唱片)，2000.

6. From the album If the Cloud Knew （如果云知道）by Xu Ruyun (许茹芸)，What's Music International Incorporated (上华唱片)，1996.

7. From the album Conquest (征服) by Na Ying（那英），EMI (百代)，1998.

8. From the album Don’t Cry For Him（别再为他流泪）by Liang Jingru (梁静茹)，B in Music (相信音乐), 2009.

9. From the album （其实你不懂我的心）by Tong Ange（童安格)，PolyGram (宝丽金唱片公司)，1989.

10. From the album Sister (姐妹) by Zhang Huimei (张惠妹), Forward Music (丰华唱片公司)，1996.

Additional information

Funding

This article is funded by Sichuan University [skgt201601].