Good Chinese Music Recommendations

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  • #42757
    Avatar photoVincent
    Participant

    I came up with the idea of finding myself some good Chinese music so I can look up the lyrics, convert it to pinyin, translate it, and then sing along and use it to improve my Chinese. The only problem is, I don’t know any good Chinese songs. I can’t really even seem to remember the last time I actually heard a Chinese song somewhere that I genuinly thought was worth remembering. Pretty much all of the stuff I hear on the radio sounds like complete commercial pop garbage. But I’m sure there must be some good bands out there.

    Who are your favorites?

    If there are some Chinese bands that sound anything like The XX, Bloc party, Agnes obel, Angus & Julia Stone, Linkin park, The Maccabees, Manu chao, Nirvana, Portishead, The Postal Service, RHCP, Soley,… or something similar, that would be awesome!

    I’m not really a big fan of hip hop, but if it’s something really worth checking out then I might be convinced anyhow.

    Ideally I would like to use one of these apps that can play the song and shows the pinyin lyrics karaoke style. I’ve seen some screenshots of this in Chinese/English on WeChat before, but finding one that can do pinyin seems like a long shot.

    Thanks for your tips!

    #42758
    Avatar photoLeon
    Participant

    Hmmm talk about music, I think I can help you lol

     

    Whats ur wechat?

    #42760
    Avatar photoVincent
    Participant

    Hey Leon, sounds good. Feel free to drop any advice you have in this thread, so other people can benefit from it as well.

    #42762
    Avatar photoAl the Dead
    Participant

    Go to the nearest KTV and ask them for some popular songs. You will get them along with subtitles and video 🙂 Some persuasion might be required though.

    Phone apps are good for that too but small screen will kill your eyes in no time.

    P.S. You can actually try and get KTV whole database but god only knows how large the thing is.

    P.S.S. While it can help you to speak Chinese, i STILL cant sing a single song on it… T_T

    #42765
    Avatar photoSS
    Participant

    To find songs you might like, get acquainted with Baidu music, which has totally replaced Spotify for me, and check out some of the non-pop categories..I would look at 劲爆 or 摇滚 categories based on your picks. Individual artists, I don’t know…Xu Wei maybe? SHE has a song called ‘Zhongguohua’ which is a real tones and pronunciation workout, though the group falls into your commercial pop category it’s pretty fun to attempt with a bunch of locals/foreigners.

    Songs at KTV, the good songs to sing at KTV are not always the same as what I would choose for listening. I like to look for Chinese remakes of well known English songs, like 流星 which is to the tune of Yellow by Coldplay, or 分开游行 which is a remake of Black Black Heart.

    #42772
    Avatar photoVincent
    Participant

    Go to the nearest KTV and ask them for some popular songs.

    P.S. You can actually try and get KTV whole database but god only knows how large the thing is.

    Thanks for your tip, but KTV songs are the worst.

    To find songs you might like, get acquainted with Baidu music, which has totally replaced Spotify for me, and check out some of the non-pop categories..I would look at 劲爆 or 摇滚 categories based on your picks.

    Interesting. I’ll try that!

    #42773
    Avatar photoChris Ziich
    Moderator

    I don’t listen to a lot of Chinese music, but I’ll leave some different suggestions here. Typical Chinese songs are love ballads, some of which I think are pretty good, but it gets pretty old because 70% of all Chinese music is like that. Then a good portion of those are just covers from decades ago. Chinese music hasn’t developed to the level of Western music, so the sound can be pretty stale. It’s picking up though.

    Pop
    筷子兄弟-老男孩 http://youtu.be/KS0aJtaO-RI
    曲婉婷 http://youtu.be/w0dMz8RBG7g
    方大同 http://youtu.be/mz04M8ljHcQ

    Rock/Alternative
    逃跑计划 http://youtu.be/4-KEbH6SAeM?list=RD4-KEbH6SAeM
    张震岳 http://youtu.be/tSGWdMLAvx8?list=RD49xsEr77YCc
    二手玫瑰

    Hip Hop
    Fat Shady and CDC (This is all in Sichuanhua) http://youtu.be/c7p5AqIJZlU

    Folk
    GALA http://youtu.be/g295WaxI2oI
    赵小雷 http://youtu.be/s4mllu3cc2Q

    Electronic
    新裤子 http://youtu.be/mu0qbh_YOlE

    #42774
    Avatar photoLeon
    Participant

    As far as I know, the main style of pop Chinese song is about sad theme such as break up or missing EX etc etc

    I personally dont like most of them, they are so negative and make me wanna brreak up with my partner too lol

    Chris Ziich has already posted some good singers, you can check them out.

    #42776
    Avatar photoRick in China
    Participant

    @Vincent
    Looking at your goal, “so I can look up the lyrics, convert it to pinyin, translate it, and then sing along and use it to improve my Chinese.” if you’re single, you may be able to find a different motivating factor here rather than just finding songs you actually like (for me at least, finding Chinese songs I enjoy is nar impossible, I think I’ve enjoyed like….2 songs, ever.) and it fits into KTV music specifically. You may not enjoy the song, however, if you can learn Chinese KTV songs, you can utilize that as a means to meet _a lot of attractive women_. I WISH I could sing (or stand.. :P) shitty Chinese KTV songs back when I was single, that would be the ultimate fishing hook mate. This may be sufficient motivation to learn _a lot of songs_, hence improve your Chinese _significantly_, as well as become familiar with a lot of popular phrases or references that would help in certain conversations…at the cost of learning generally terrible music of course!

    #42778
    Avatar photoChris Ziich
    Moderator

    The main vocab you’re going to learn are: loneliness, longing for, missing, hurt, pain, crying, love, springtime, moonlight, rain.

    But anyways, check out this band. More underground rock. I think I saw these guys at Strawberry Festival. Their stage was packed, there was crowd surfing, a bonfire, and moshing. A crazy scene for China.

    扭曲的机器
    http://music.douban.com/subject/1404501/

    also the Sad Sack
    http://site.douban.com/sadsack/

    #42788
    Avatar photoCharlie
    Keymaster

    Chris left some good recommendations. I would second 二手玫瑰 and add Nova Heart to that list. One great way to discover good Chinese music in general is to hang out at Little Bar in Chengdu. Basically all of the best performers in China have played there and this is where you will find the cream of the crop in China. The audience for bad music in China is enormous but Little Bar is a very good cultivator of quality.

    Some immortals Gods of Chinese rock music to check out are 窦唯 (Douwei), Cui Jian, and Tang Dynasty. I particularly like Douwei.

    With regard to rap, I think that will be a little more practical as far as furthering your Chinese. Many of the lyrics in rock music are a little nonsensical, just like they are in English. Some rappers to check out are Soft Lipa and 小老虎. There’s a Wikipedia entry on Chinese Hip Hop which is a good place to get started.

    #42789
    Avatar photoGeorgeman
    Participant

    I think if you want to learning Chinese by singing songs, you should choose some simple but nice songs. here’s my list:
    情人的眼泪 by 蔡琴
    月亮代表我的心 by 邓丽君
    我只在乎你 by 林宥嘉 (originally by 邓丽君)
    夜来香 by 李香兰
    标准情人 by 金城武
    朋友 by 周华健
    一个人 by 任贤齐
    心太软 by 任贤齐
    还有我 by 任贤齐
    练习 by 刘德华
    简单爱 by 周杰伦
    相思河畔 by 陈百强

    all those songs are old stuffs. and as said above, KTV is a nice place for you. 😀

    #42792
    Avatar photoVincent
    Participant

    A lot of useful stuff in here, thanks guys. Give me some time to check everything out one by one. Funnily enough I started with “Nova Heart” and got hooked to her/their latest album after the first listen… which seems to be completely in English. Lol.

    I also randomly listened to two Second Hand Rose 二手玫瑰 songs on Baidu and loved them both.

    Good stuff in here!

    #42794
    Avatar photoRay
    Participant

    Saw these guys a few years ago in Little bar and was mighty impressed. Good luck deciphering the lyrics tho!

    Edit: actually, these guys may be singing in Mongolian?!

    #42797
    Avatar photoVincent
    Participant

    Ray, now that’s a song I could squat to!

    Some parts seem to be in Mongolian indeed.

    #42800
    Avatar photoEve
    Participant

    what about 小苹果。 XD

    #42817
    Avatar photoJordan Porter
    Participant

    Charlie and Chris left some good recommendations.

    There are lots of cool contemporary bands in China too – check out  Hedgehog, Queen Sea Big Shark, Carsick Cars.  They are all from Beijing, but there are some sweet bands in that scene-  i think the drummer from Nova Heart is in Hedgehog as well….  However, they all sing in english a bunch, not great for learning Chinese, but good to restore your faith in the fact that there are cool bands here.

    Download an app like Duomi (or qq music I guess) you can download or stream songs (tons of songs, serious selection) and the screen will scroll through the lyrics as you listen.

    And if your into Cantonese nothing beats Beyond!

    #42823
    Avatar photoCharlie
    Keymaster

    Download an app like Duomi (or qq music I guess) you can download or stream songs (tons of songs, serious selection) and the screen will scroll through the lyrics as you listen.

    Another really good one to check out is Xiami (虾米), although on iPhone it’s only available in the Chinese App Store (virtually everything on there is pirated). I logged into a friends Chinese iTunes account on my phone just to get the app. It’s like a Chinese Spotify, it streams virtually everything imaginable, including Western artists. Lyrics are built in and when I ran the app for the first time it notified me of an offer to allow unlimited 3G streaming for 8/yuan a month on China Unicom. If I didn’t already have/use the paid version of Spotify I would probably pay that 8/yuan a month and be use it to stream music to my phone anywhere.

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