“I know this topic is very sudden for everyone. Some of you might think our production team’s arrangements are baffling and inexplicable, not knowing what we’re fussing about.”
Chen Shiyu smiled and looked at the surprised or confused young people below the stage. “Some might also think that apart from the singers being different, there aren’t many differences between girl group songs and boy group songs. At most, the music styles are a bit different, but even the styles of boy group works vary.”
As soon as she said this, many trainees unconsciously nodded in agreement.
Yes. There wasn’t much difference between boy group songs and girl group songs to begin with. To put it bluntly, they were just songs. Singers had gender, but did a song also have gender?
Most of the well-known, massively popular songs on the market had cover versions by different singers. If there was a difference between a male singer’s cover and a female singer’s cover, the most obvious one was probably just the key change. Other adaptations varied from person to person and had little to do with whether the singer was male or female.
So why did the production team set the theme for the third public performance as “Girl Group Song Adaptation”?
The root of it was still that this sounded novel, had a gimmick, and could generate buzz. Plus, coincidentally, Aurora was participating in this performance as guest performers.
The boy group trainees were performing on the same stage for the first time with their senior sister girl group, and the songs they were performing were also famous songs by various girl groups. It sounded like something worth watching, didn’t it?
But putting those thoughts aside for now, this was the segment where the mentor and the trainees have a chat. Chen Shiyu had done a lot of homework for today’s team formation and song selection.
She sat cross-legged on the floor like the boys, her gentle and kind appearance making people involuntarily forget her past strict and domineering side.
“Since everyone has questions, before we choose the songs, let’s first have a good discussion about what the differences are between boy group songs and girl group songs.”
She continued methodically: “Can boy group members perform girl group works? How should you adapt girl group dances? How will you cooperate with girl group members?”
“Please, speak freely.”
The first to raise his hand was Yang Siyi from Class B. He smiled and waved his hand, and after the mentor nodded, he said casually: “I’ll go first. I’ll just say something simple. Boy group works are cooler, more handsome, more mysterious. Girl group works are prettier, cuter, more fashionable!”
“Just talking about the songs, those are the only style differences I can think of. But if we talk about MVs… I think girl group MVs have brighter, more vivid colors. Does that count as a difference?”
Chen Shiyu nodded slightly: “It counts. That’s good. Any other thoughts?”
Yang Siyi shrugged: “That’s all I can think of for now. Let others speak.”
On the other side, Cheng Shaozi proactively raised his hand to ask a question: “Teacher, can I talk about the dance and stage performance aspects?”
“Of course you can.”
Cheng Shaozi straightened his back, sitting very upright, his expression meticulous: “Okay, first let me state that nothing I say is absolute; there are always exceptions. I personally feel that boy group performances emphasize ‘power’ and ‘precision.’ The dance movements are larger, and they pursue extreme neatness, which is often called ‘knife-group dance’ online.”
“Girl group performances, on the other hand, emphasize ‘aesthetic sense’ and ‘expressiveness.’ The dance pays more attention to body beauty, hand gesture details, and expression management. The overall infectiousness of the stage is the top priority.”
He paused, then added: “Also, one more point. Comparatively speaking, girl group dances are less difficult. Choreographers tend to create signature dance moves that are easy to learn and have viral potential. Many hit girl group songs have corresponding wildly popular dance segments.”
Chen Shiyu: “So when you adapt girl group dances, you should keep these signature dance moves?”
Cheng Shaozi thought for a moment and answered cautiously: “These moves are generally tied to the original song’s most popular segments. Under the premise of respecting the original song, I think they can be kept.”
Chen Shiyu asked curiously: “Girl group dances have such moves. Don’t boy group dances have them? Is it just because boy group dances are too hard?”
“No…” Cheng Shaozi subconsciously denied. “Of course not.”
He was silent for a moment, probably weighing his words, thinking about how to answer this question in front of the camera.
Then Yan Qiao, sitting on the other side, suddenly interjected: “The difficulty of the dance is only one reason. The key is that the market positioning of boy groups and girl groups is different, and their target audiences are also different.”
After all, Chen Shiyu had never been involved in work related to idol groups. She had been a singer for most of her life, step by step reaching her current status as a queen of pop.
Although she knew nothing about the idol culture of today’s young people before coming to this survival show and only gradually gained a rough understanding after arriving, she could understand the trainees’ words and had a desire to explore these topics.
To put it bluntly, her body was in its forties or fifties, but her mindset was still young.
She asked back: “How are they different? Whether it’s a boy group or a girl group, most of the fans are young girls, right?”
Yan Qiao rarely used such seemingly professional vocabulary to describe things. He had heard a lot when he was a trainee at BKL, but he didn’t often participate in this type of conversation because he always felt that discussing such things was too vague and it was better to spend the time practicing dancing.
At this moment, he shook his head and tried to summarize the knowledge he had heard using concise language: “The core fans of boy groups have very strong spending power, mainly driving the fan economy. Girl groups mostly pursue public recognition and their reputation among passersby, with the goal of creating hit songs on music charts.”
Therefore, girl groups often had higher national popularity, but the fanaticism and spending power of their core fans were probably not as high as those of boy groups.
In this environment, girl groups produce hit songs with viral dance segments, all goals set by the company when planning new songs, and the pressure they face is greater.
In comparison, as long as a boy group stabilized their fan base, attracted fans, and increased their commercial value, they didn’t need to worry about new album sales being poor.
Of course, these two paths have no distinction in difficulty; each had its own difficulties.
After Yan Qiao said these words, some people secretly glanced over at him, amazed that he knew so much, but even more people were surprised that he would speak like this in front of the camera.
However, with him taking the lead, more and more trainees began to speak enthusiastically.
Half an hour later, Chen Shiyu clapped her hands and concluded with a smile: “It seems the differences between boy groups and girl groups, and male and female singers, are quite significant. I didn’t know a lot of what you said. So, how about it? Do you have any ideas about this adaptation now?”
Xue Mingzhu waved his hand and said: “Teacher, you have to give us the songs first. Without the songs, we can’t have other ideas.”
Chen Shiyu raised an eyebrow: “We can still give examples and discuss without the songs. We’ve been talking about the differences between boy and girl group songs for so long, but I didn’t see you raise your hand to speak earlier. Now you have an opinion. Be patient. The songs will be given to you eventually. What’s the hurry?”
She looked at the blonde-haired young man sitting beside Xue Mingzhu, hugging his knee and not saying a word: “Quentin, you haven’t spoken either, have you? This time, you answer. You should have the best original composition skills among everyone here. Do you have any thoughts?”
“…”
Quentin silently sighed inwardly. He had kept his head down and not spoken, trying to reduce his presence as much as possible, but he still hadn’t escaped.
If it were any other professional question, he could speak eloquently about it. Even in areas he wasn’t so good at, he could still express his views to some extent.
But when it came to girl groups… he was really at a loss. If someone had asked him a question about boy groups two months ago, he would have been confused too.
Because not knowing was not knowing. Not having been exposed to it was not having been exposed to it.
During this time of recording the show, Quentin did indeed go to the system space every night to practice more, but that didn’t mean he often stayed in the space surfing the internet.
The system could connect to the internet, so the production team’s confiscation of phones had no effect on the system. But he himself was not an internet addict. In fact, he could be said to be the opposite extreme of an internet addict.
To some extent, the closed door recording of “Next Stage” coincided with Quentin’s habit of “seclusion” to write songs in his previous life.
This young man, who had become a sensation at a young age and maintained his popularity all along, had living habits that were out of place with the new era of the internet. He was not like most American teenagers who loved sports and parties, nor was he like normal young people who couldn’t do without their phones and the internet.
He was truly very recluse. So much so that aside from work hours, he could remain completely disconnected from the outside world, closing his door to visitors, as if living in seclusion within a bustling city, not concerning himself with worldly affairs.
The week before the official recording of “NS” was probably the time when Quentin’s desire to explore this world was strongest and most active. He used that week to listen to the golden songs on the light music app, to understand the process and public opinion of survival shows, and to briefly browse the summarized cliches of entertainment industry novels…
After that, like every other trainee on “NS,” he became isolated from the outside world and immersed himself in the recording of the survival show.
The only things that made him remember to go online were the release of Cupid’s new song and album. Everything else, such as establishing a company, signing contracts with platforms, authorizing song copyrights, and other miscellaneous matters, were left to the system to handle.
Actually, if it weren’t for the fact that Quentin had discovered the system’s bottom line was unexpectedly low, he wouldn’t have been so unscrupulous.
One system was as good as an entire studio. Its work efficiency was so high that Quentin felt he would be losing out if he didn’t exploit it.
The key was that the system was very tolerant. Not only did it not urge Quentin to do tasks, but it also kindly advised him not to rush when he hesitated and thought about the tasks.
It could only be said that it was worthy of a former preschool education system. The tolerance and inclusiveness of preschool education were just as terrifying.
Quentin knew very few boy groups. If he hadn’t participated in the recording of “Cat and Mouse Game,” he wouldn’t have even known what ECHO and Inferno were.
As for girl groups, even less needed to be said. Who knows which girl groups were wildly popular in this world? He only remembered that the girl group that debuted from last year’s survival show was called Aurora, which could be considered their senior sister group as trainees of this season.
If he had to say, Quentin also knew a few girl group songs. They were in the song library for the last random dance challenge, and he happened to have learned them. But he only knew the songs; he didn’t know the groups that sang them.
He couldn’t possibly admit on a survival show that he knew nothing about the senior girl group, could he? This matter sounded too absurd. It would be like a performance major student not knowing which big actors were in the industry, or a vocal special student unable to name a few popular singers.
Quentin knew that Chen Shiyu had hoped he could give examples of which songs could be adapted in which direction, which elements could be incorporated, and which needed to be removed.
But the more he said, the more likely he was to make mistakes. To prevent the conversation from eventually turning to the girl groups themselves, he could only pretend not to understand the mentor’s meaning and speak superficially about some surface-level things.
“For adaptation, it still needs to be done according to the original song and the singer. On the basis of retaining the essence of the original song, combine the strengths and style of the singer.”
He pointed to a few of his teammates beside him, indicating: “For example, our team’s strengths are being able to sing, dance, and rap. Our overall style should lean towards cool and handsome. We have more people with cold faces and aloof attitudes. So when adapting the song, we should try to go in this direction.”
Everyone looked at him with strange expressions. He said others had cold faces and aloof attitudes…what the hell, the person who best fit that description was Quentin himself!
Chen Shiyu ignored the odd looks and asked again: “What if the song you want to adapt happens to be contrary to your style? What would you do then?”
Respect the original song, or make bold changes in your own direction?
Quentin answered without hesitation: “Go according to the original song’s style. ‘Black Umbrella’ for the first public performance wasn’t my style, but I could adapt to it.”
“However, if conditions permit, I wouldn’t choose a song contrary to our style during the song selection phase.”
Chen Shiyu laughed: “So absolute? Shouldn’t you young people try more new things? How can you be so sure what style suits you best so early? Trying more is also good. Your ‘Black Umbrella’ was done very well, wasn’t it?”
In front of the camera, the blonde-haired young man shook his head, his chin resting on his knee, and said very honestly: “Trying it once in a while is enough. I have self-awareness. I am invincible in my comfort zone, but if I leave it, I will be downgraded.”
Chen Shiyu: “…”
How could this kid’s words be both arrogant and cowardly? No, essentially, it was still very arrogant. He even said ‘invincible’. He didn’t say how many levels he would be downgraded either. Sure enough, he was still young, so arrogant.
“Then what is your comfort zone?”
“What I like, what can inspire my creative desire, and what is within my singing ability at the same time.”
Chen Shiyu smiled and teased: “That range is a bit broad, isn’t it? Are you sure you are invincible within this range?”
“Of course I’m sure.” Quentin said without changing his expression. “Those whose hobbies are the same as mine are all friends. Where are the enemies?”
“Ahem, ahem! So that’s what ‘invincible’ means? Alright, it makes sense. I’ll let you pass.”
Chen Shiyu took out her phone from her pocket and found the audio file the director team had sent her in advance: “We’ve talked a lot today. If no one has any other questions, let’s choose the songs.”
“…Wait, wait!”
A hand shot up from the back row, followed by a stuttering question: “M-Miss Chen, I wanted to ask… um, for this public performance, will we be cooperating with our seniors from the girl group?”
Chen Shiyu looked up and saw the nervousness and anticipation in the young man’s eyes. She remembered this young man. It was Liao Fei, the first one to come on stage during the initial evaluation and play the guitar.
She asked back: “Why do you ask that? Who do you hope to cooperate with?”
Liao Fei tentatively said in a small voice: “The senior sisters of Aurora?”
Chen Shiyu’s tone was surprised: “Huh? You all know already? Did the production team reveal it beforehand?”
In the crowd, a certain person with connections lowered his head guiltily. Director Wang, sitting in the monitoring room, gave the treacherous brat a deep look.
No one answered Chen Shiyu’s question, but she didn’t mind either. She nodded in acknowledgment: “Yes, congratulations. Your wish has come true. Your senior sisters will come over tomorrow to rehearse the performance stage with you. They will also be staying at the recording base for the next few days, with the same daily schedule as you.”
Yang Siyi chuckled: “So the senior sisters have to wake up early and go to bed early too?”
The other trainees also started discussing animatedly.
“Hehe, last season’s survival show contestants woke up later than us. It’s time for the senior sisters to experience the joy of staying in the practice room before dawn!”
“Last season’s survival show wasn’t as competitive as ours. Welcome, senior sisters, to experience the devilish schedule of practicing overnight and sleeping on the floor in the practice room!”
“Shouldn’t we be mourning for the senior sister assigned to Quentin’s group in advance…”
Others also asked questions with great interest.
“Teacher, teacher, which senior sisters are coming this time?”
“Aurora has seven members. There are only six teams here. Is someone not coming?”
“Miss Chen, how will the senior sisters be grouped? Will they choose our six teams?”
“It should be related to the song selection later. I think the senior sisters have already chosen the songs. Whichever song we pick, we’ll be on the same team as the senior sister corresponding to that song.”
“Stop, stop, stop….”
Chen Shiyu made a ‘stop’ gesture and said helplessly: “No need to be so excited, right? Weren’t you in a hurry to choose songs just now? Now you have so many questions?”
Xue Mingzhu crossed his arms and said seriously: “Teacher, you don’t understand. This is an opportunity to perform with our seniors. Of course it’s exciting.”
Chen Shiyu: “You seem quite calm to me.”
The young man coughed softly and said nonchalantly: “That’s because they have no experience, while I do.”
As soon as he said this, he was immediately besieged by everyone. Finally, Chen Shiyu raised her hand to call a stop, bringing the chaotic scene under control.
“Alright, everyone. Let’s choose the songs. Okay?”
Chen Shiyu sincerely felt that she had a good temper. She really wouldn’t get angry in this situation. Forty young men were gathered together, it was normal for them to be noisy and boisterous.
Looking at it from another perspective, she was nearly fifty years old, old enough to be their mother. She could just pretend she was raising a bunch of silly sons… no, thinking about it that way was even more disheartening.
She didn’t give the others time to react and directly started playing the audio: “Okay, listen carefully. This is the first song.”
…
Actually, the earlier discussion about the “differences between boy group songs and girl group songs” had missed one very important point, which was the song’s theme and concept.
The themes of boy group songs mostly revolved around youthful confidence, ambition, success, rebellion, loneliness, and inner struggle. Their concepts were generally more grand and abstract.
The themes of girl group songs were more diverse, but traditionally they focused on love, friendship, self-expression, and female power. Their concepts were closer to reality compared to boy groups.
And the three popular girl group songs selected by the production team were all about love.
After all, this was a boy group survival show. Aside from one group in the second public performance whose original theme had something to do with “First Love”, all other stages had absolutely nothing to do with romance.
How could that be allowed? Their production team really spoiled their girlfriend fans. Even the theme song’s MV was shot from a Mary Sue female protagonist’s perspective. How could the public performance stage lack romantic elements?
However, although the themes of these three songs were all love, the lyrical backgrounds and core themes were completely different.
To summarize the lyrical backgrounds, the three songs were: first love in youth, emotional venting in a high-pressure workplace, and casual fast-food romance between mature men and women.
The difference in scale was huge… the first song was still Makabaka (it’s a children’s show), the latter two were already on the highway.
Actually, many love songs have lyrics that were a bit thirsty when you savored them, with words like baby, kiss, breath, burn, etc. But the three songs selected by the production team were different. No matter how you talked about love in girl group songs, it was still love from a female perspective.
For example, the first song was called “Senior Sister, No”. The general meaning was that a female protagonist nearing her high school graduation encountered several charming junior brothers. They were all like demons attracting the female protagonist, the fire of love blooming like flowers.
But the expectations of parents, the requirements of teachers, the pressure of studies, and the pursuit of the ideal university were all within reach.
So, the senior sister could not be enchanted by the little demons At this critical juncture in her life, she must not be delayed by romance. Studying hard and striving for a bright future was the absolute principle!
Doesn’t that sound very different from “first love in youth”? The latter two songs were also like this.
How to put it? In order for the boy group trainees to have more room to perform, the production team selected songs with more male characters. More male characters meant it couldn’t be pure love.
Once a love song wasn’t pure love… as you could imagine, it was either chaotic or overly dramatic.
But in Quentin’s view, none of this mattered. As long as the melody was catchy, that was sufficient.
The only thing worth criticizing was that the lyrics were just so-so, quite plain. The repetition of the five characters “Senior Sister, No” was too high. No wonder it went viral. The more you listened, the more it got stuck in your head.
“So, what do you think? Have you decided which one to choose?” Xue Mingzhu turned his head and asked quietly.
Quentin nodded: “I have a preference. What do you think?”
Yan Qiao propped up his chin and said lazily: “I’m fine with anything. Our team should be able to hold the styles of these three songs. It depends on whether you guys want to go for the campus style this time or you know…’that’ style.”
Wen Xinyi raised his eyebrows slightly: “…Please explain in detail what ‘that’ style is.”
Xue Mingzhu shook his head and pursed his lips: “Tsk, Wen Xinyi, oh Wen Xinyi. You look so upright, but you’ve also learned to ask questions you already know the answer to.”
Cui Yan rubbed the back of his head and laughed: “Is he talking about the nightclub style? Haha, that’s a very accurate summary.”
Fang Xu said quietly: “Don’t laugh so cheerfully while saying something like that…”
Besides, how could Yan Qiao’s ‘that’ style possibly just refer to nightclubs. Heh, at the very least, it was NP, very suggestive.
Qi Yang looked left at Quentin, then right at the other teammates, and urged expressionlessly: “Shouldn’t we quickly discuss and get a result?”
“Yeah, indeed. In a while, our team should be the first to choose.”
“Doesn’t that mean Cheng Shaozi’s team has no choice? Whatever we pick, they get. That’s a bit miserable ”
“If we have no ideas, we could also ask them.”
“I’ll go with what Quentin says. Team leader, what do you say? Which song should we pick?”
Quentin didn’t hesitate much and directly said: “Since none of you have any ideas, let’s choose the first one.”
As for the reason?
It had nothing to do with the scale of risque. It wasn’t like they couldn’t pull off the suggestive style. They already twisted and danced quite enthusiastically during the random dance challenge.
The main reason was that the male characters described in the latter two songs were older. There were a few people in the team who weren’t even 20 yet. Also, Fang Xu was exactly 20, Cui Yan and Wen Xinyi were 21, and Qi Yang was 22.
Counting it out, the oldest had just graduated from university, the youngest had just started university. What workplace romance were they supposed to do? What mature men and mature women were they supposed to act like? Their looks weren’t convincing. They couldn’t expect everyone to have plastic surgery-level acting skills, could they?
So it was better to honestly choose “Senior Sister, No”. Campus love was still somewhat suitable.
After Quentin finished speaking, his teammates unanimously approved. In the end, there were no surprises in the song selection either. Their opposing group was also very satisfied. It was said that this was the song they had wanted too.
Thus, the team formation and song selection for the third public performance officially ended.
The next day at noon, a tall, slender figure quietly appeared outside the practice room of Quentin’s team.
The young woman in a white tracksuit stood by the window, curiously peeking inside through the glass.
Her waist-length hair was tied into a low ponytail with an elastic band. Her overall outfit was exceptionally plain, but her eyebrows were heroic, her temperament outstanding. Even wearing simple clothes, she had a natural sense of fashion.
“Hmm?”
Zhang Fu narrowed her eyes and muttered softly: “No one? Did they all go to the cafeteria?”
It was good that no one was there… She hadn’t figured out how to get along with these juniors yet.
She breathed a sigh of relief internally, withdrew her gaze, and walked towards the front door.
The practice room door was unlocked. The curtains were wide open, and the light was clear and transparent.
Outside the window, the trees were verdant, birds chirped, and the light wood-colored floor shimmered with golden virtual shadows under the sunlight. The environment in the Yanhai suburbs was very good; even the sky was azure blue.
The scene that unfolded upon pushing the door open had a dreamlike quality, and Zhang Fu was momentarily stunned by the sight.
Before she could snap out of it, she caught a glimpse of some movement by the wall near the front door from the corner of her eye.
Right under the window where she had been standing just now, also a visual blind spot invisible from outside the window, a light gray thin blanket was spread against the wall, covering something horizontally.
Zhang Fu looked down and focused… No, not something. There was a person lying here!
The thin blanket covered the person underneath from head to waist. Legs in red sweatpants were bent and stretched, exposed outside. One hand lay horizontally on the stomach, the other casually stretched outward. The whole sleeping posture was natural and carefree.
Obviously, the function of this blanket was not for warmth, but to cover the face from the light.
But suddenly seeing a person with a covered face was also very scary, okay! Luckily, Zhang Fu was brave. Her heartbeat only quickened for a moment before she calmed down the next second.
This morning, before coming here, she had learned from the production team the list of the team she had been assigned to. It had to be said, she was lucky, because many of the most popular trainees on the entire show were in her team.
However, from another perspective, Zhang Fu felt she was extremely unlucky.
Because after learning this news, the most excited person was the vicious and annoying manager of their group.
And whenever the manager was happy, it meant someone among them was going to suffer.
The unlucky one was undoubtedly Zhang Fu, who was ordered by the manager to bind with at least one popular contestant to create a cp during this show recording.
