Differences between Chinese and American song lyrics?

[fantasyvn]

Hi everyone, I love Chinese pop music, especially by Taiwanese and Hong Kong singers. However, due to the language barrier, I would need to find English translation on the web if I want to understand the lyrics. So I don't have a coherent understanding about the writing styles in Chinese pop songs, apart from the fact that most songs are about love.

 

Do you think there are many differences in the way the lyrics are written in Chinese and American pop songs?

 

Thank you

 

 

[Nathan Mao]

I love this topic!

 

I'll keep it short, however.

 

First, you may find that older songs have an interesting lyric pattern where they sing a verse, then a chorus, then sing the first verse over again, then the chorus again.

Sort of 1st Verse, Chorus, 1st verse, Chorus (where the US version would be 1st verse, 2nd verse, Chorus, 3rd verse, Chorus).

 

That slowly changed to the point where they would still repeat the first chorus, but only the 2nd half.  So the pattern would be 1st verse part A, 1st verse part B, Chorus, 1st verse part B, Chorus.

 

Or else it would be 1st verse, Chorus, 1st verse with minor changes, Chorus.

 

These days Chinese music has mostly abandoned these old forms and now tends to follow more western verse patterns.

 

As far as topic is concerned, I feel like western pop music is mainly about sex, drugs, and rock and roll.   Songs can be about falling in love, or breaking up, or being attracted to someone, or trying to attract someone, or the hassles of being a band on the road, or an irony about fame, or how great it feels to dance to your favorite song, or a thinly-veiled drug reference, or a social commentary, etc...all over the map with topics.

 

Chinese pop music is approximately 80% about having a broken heart.  Whether it is the singer feeling mistreated, or feeling lonely/abandoned, or worried their lover is going to cheat, or suspecting their lover is cheating, or finding out their lover did cheat, or being angry about being broken up with, or planning to break up, or how guilty you feel for cheating on your lover, or how the person who broke up with you ruined your life, or confronting the lover who cheated on you, etc, it pretty much all seems to be about heatbreak. (apologies for inconsistent pronouns...I'm too lazy to try to fix 'em)

 

There are some exceptions. There are enough decent love songs to do a karaoke courtship.  There are some semi-silly songs out there.  I can even think of one social commentary song: 李文 《颜色》.  But the non-relationship songs are rare.

[Nathan Mao]

I also think that Chinese lyrics are often more poignant, because the homonyms give you more rhyming choices, and the syllabic nature of the language means you can fit, say, rhododendrons into the lyrics much more easily in Chinese than in English.

[Ruben von Zwack]

I wonder if it's common in Chinese lyrics to use the seasons and landscapes as metaphors for your feelings. Shedding a tear at the foot of a snow covered mountain (every other dao lang song), lending someone an umbrella in the rain (jay chou, mine mine), comparing your relationship to leaves falling (jay chou, feng/maple)... i know there's weather in US pop music too, madonna "rain" comes to my mind, but it seems more frequent + systematic to me in Chinese. I never pondered this systematically thpugh so my impression could be off. ps sorry 'bout spelling, typing on phone is a pain

[Nathan Mao]

@Ruben

I never really thought about it, but now that you've pointed it out: yes.

 

There are several references to flowers opening and withering to mean a relationship starting and ending.

刘若英‘s 为爱痴狂 has a reference to her arriving in Spring, and you (him) saying "split up" in Autumn.

[fantasyvn]

Thanks to Nathan Mao for pointing out the structure, "1st Verse, Chorus, 1st verse, Chorus." I was surprised to find this structure in the songs by newer artists like Jay Chou.

[Kamille]

I found that structure in songs by Mavis Fan too. It always feels funny to hear her "repeat the whole song without changing anything".

[Nathan Mao]

If it isn't obvious, I love Taiwan Pop.  Or, Mando-pop, but Taiwan puts out 80% of Mando-pop, and 98% of the good stuff.  It seems like if there is a good mainland artist, they get co-opted by Taiwan anyway, like 那英.

I have to admit, I don't like the most recent artists as much. S.H.E., F.I.R., Twins, Jay Chou, F4, etc, all leave me cold.

1995 to 2002 seems to be the sweet spot for me.  I like guitar-based rock-and-roll. There is music after 2002 that I like, but in almost every case, those are songs done by artists that got popular between 1995 and 2002.

Probably my favorite singer is 刘虹桦. She isn't the best singer, of course. She absolutely isn't the most popular. Her songs aren't all that well-known.  But I guess I just enjoy her catalog of songs the most, from top to bottom. I enjoy her songs most consistently, no real weak ones...but she has enough of them I don't get bored too quickly.  For example, I actually like the songs of 刘纯如 better, but I've only been able to find one album of songs.

Another one of my favorites is 林晓培. There are just a handful of her songs that I don't like, and of course her catalog is much, much larger than 刘虹桦.

I also like 张宇， 万芳， 那英， 刘若英 (although she gets boring/monotonous if you listen to her entire catalog at once)， 伍伯， 吴明慧， 范晓萱， 纪如景， and much of the latter half of 蓝心湄's catalog.

[Demonic_Duck]

Thanks to Nathan Mao for pointing out the structure, "1st Verse, Chorus, 1st verse, Chorus." I was surprised to find this structure in the songs by newer artists like Jay Chou.

One of the first songs I learnt in Chinese has a rather repetitive structure, but instead, it's:

 

Verse 1

Verse 2

Chorus

Verse 1

Verse 2

Chorus

 

However, the second half of both verses and choruses is the same, with the result that in a song with 24 lines, there are only 8 unique ones. Nice and easy to learn. The song is 陈楚生's 《姑娘》, and it's still one of my favourite Chinese songs (Chinese people, on the other hand, have decidedly mixed feelings about it). I'd say the lyrics in this song also reflect another lyrical trend in Chinese as opposed to Western music - they're often more overwrought and dramatic, especially when the subject is romance.

[Baron]

There are many Chinese pop songs about breaking up and then getting drunk. US pop songs don't feature alcohol often. British pop songs occasionally have an alcohol theme, but it's usually 'woohoo getting drunk is ace'.

 

That's one difference.