Chapter 90: Heated Debate!

The night was deep and still.

Critic Zhang Feng came home, yawned, and tossed the record he had received at Jiang Lun’s debut concert onto the table. Then he poured himself a glass of water, drank it down in a few gulps, and mixed a special honey drink to set beside his computer. After that he went to the bathroom, lit a cigarette, and returned to his desk.

While booting up the computer, he slipped the album’s CD into the drive. Flipping through the lyric booklet that came with the record, he found the three songs Jiang Lun had not performed at the afternoon concert.

He started with the first one.

Opening “My Sky,” he put on his headphones.

A familiar rock rhythm and arrangement erupted, and the whole night seemed to boil at once. He nodded and swayed to the lyrics for a while, growing more and more excited with each passing minute. Then he opened a document on his computer and began writing his review.

“This is a surprising piece of music, a fierce collision of rock and rap...”

He wrote only that one line before deleting it.

He was a professional critic. He had once worked as a DJ for a radio music channel, and now, after quitting his job, worked from home as a freelance writer, collaborating year-round with several music magazines.

Yet for some reason, today he suddenly found it strangely difficult to write a review for a song like this.

He even felt as though he no longer knew how to write criticism at all. The song’s conception was forward-looking, and many of its elements were things he was encountering for the first time, with professional terms he did not even know how to name yet.

If he wrote only from the impression of listening, it would be far too hasty. It seemed he would have to find some professional material and study it carefully before he could complete this review.

In another apartment, the well-known online celebrity “Music Scene” was also listening to Jiang Lun’s album.

He was not writing about any one song, but reviewing the entire album.

Again and again he revised his piece, avoiding musical styles he was unfamiliar with and focusing instead on emotional language. In the end, he produced a review titled: “A Somewhat Luxurious Private Press Record.”

“How many times in a lifetime can one be brought to tears by a single song? It is a rather extravagant experience. On the evening of June tenth, with half an hour left before midnight, I was alone at home when ‘A Person’s Beijing’ struck me down in an instant. Jiang Lun sang the loneliness and helplessness of drifting in Beijing, the bewilderment and loss described so precisely in the lyrics that I, a longtime drifter in the capital of fifteen years, was suddenly shaken to the core!

“The album’s overall concept is quite forward-thinking, containing both Jiang Lun’s self-created new style and some familiar musical forms. Yet I believe much of it is his own private stash. The production level is remarkably mature. I glanced at the producer credit: Li Qing, the famous music producer who had previously produced only one album for the diva Liu Xiayu, in a sense her personal producer. Having him oversee Jiang Lun’s album is a perfectly fitting match.

“Finally, I would especially recommend one song on the album, a track that was not chosen as a title song and was not performed at the debut concert: ‘Only One’!

“This R&B-style song is rich in musicality and beautifully melodic. In terms of compositional craft, as well as the sincerity and delicacy of the vocal performance, it surpasses most songs in today’s pop scene. What puzzles me is why it was not chosen as a lead track!”

After finishing the review, Music Scene sent the text by email to several partner magazines, and also posted it on Weibo, scheduling it for release at six o’clock tomorrow afternoon, exactly when the major music magazines would all go on sale.

After all that, he chose to put “Only One” on repeat.

“How fresh my sky is,

The transparent promise is the air of the past.

It is you who hold my hand,

Yet your smile

Remains impossible to see...”

To Jiang Lun’s mind, this song that Music Scene singled out as especially worthy was merely a tilt and convergence toward mainstream pop. If the whole album were utterly unconventional, that would be far too risky.

But the song was also not enough to carry the entire album’s structure, because this was not a pure pop record. Its complex and diverse sound encompassed many musical styles, and “Only One” was merely one of them, the sole representative of a classic R&B pop style.

He hoped that years from now, when people spoke of R&B pop, the first song that came to mind would be this “Only One.”

At the same time, famed music producer Dai Qiong was also alone in her study on that silent night, listening to the album “Positive Energy.”

She had once been a female singer-songwriter, but after damaging her voice, she turned to producing.

In her own music, classical Chinese style occupied the greater part, and her compositions likewise tended to be rooted in that tradition.

When she opened “Positive Energy,” she began to feel a headache coming on.

So many different styles, and not one of them was to her taste, yet she was still forced to write a review.

For several songs she listened only to the chorus and ending, fast-forwarding through them, catching the intro and interlude, trying to find something worth commenting on in the arrangement or elsewhere.

As for the rap tracks, she skipped them outright and moved on. Whatever the type of rap, she found it especially detestable.

On the next song, she suddenly heard the sound of a strong wind rushing past through her headphones.

Then came the notes of a bamboo flute. Dai Qiong’s eyes flew wide open, and she hurriedly picked up the lyric booklet to see what song this was.

The music continued. A drumbeat fell suddenly, while the zither and piano, one Eastern and one Western, worked in tandem, occasionally threaded with a few guitar notes.

Dai Qiong quickly found the title: “The South of the River.”

Delicate, beautiful, graceful.

Those were the three words that sprang to her mind at once. The lyrics, the melody, and the arrangement all blended with perfect precision, conjuring the feeling of standing amid the waterways of the south, of mist and rain, of a melancholy that clung like damp silk. By weaving classical Chinese elements into an R&B rhythm, the song created a sensation of temporal dislocation, of passing through ancient and modern at once.

“How can music like this exist?”

Dai Qiong’s words were both exclamation and question.

To her, classical-style music meant refined and elegant lyrics, balanced phrasing, lines like poetry and verse, a melody that was beautiful, flowing, and dreamlike, with an emphasis on tune and extensive use of traditional instruments.

Not music that incorporated Western styles and vocal techniques.

Yet when heard as a whole, it did not feel out of place. In particular, the Western R&B vocal approach seemed to find its equivalent in Chinese opera, with that same circling, ornamented turn of voice.

“My heavens! It’s incredible!”

Unable to restrain herself, Dai Qiong exclaimed again, then immediately opened a document and began writing her review of “The South of the River.”

She wrote more than five hundred words and posted a long Weibo message, recommending that everyone listen to the song tomorrow.

Dai Qiong had a large following, and they were all devoted to classical style. They did not like the metallic edge of rock, nor the heaviness of classical music, nor the frivolity of pop. They only loved the unique Chinese aesthetic that classical-style music brought.

Now, seeing their queen of classical style post a recommendation for “The South of the River,” they immediately began asking everywhere where they could hear it.

The news spread quickly through that small circle. After much asking around, they finally learned that the song came from Jiang Lun’s new album, Positive Energy, which would not officially go on sale until tomorrow. Online, the earliest anyone could hear it would be after eight o’clock tomorrow morning.

At noon the next day, Jiang Lun rubbed his sleepy eyes and climbed out of bed.

He glanced beside him, but there was no one there. He had no idea where Chen Yingying had gone.

What he had failed to do last night, he made up for after waking in the morning. And after making up for it, he fell asleep again, not waking until now.

“Yingying!”

Jiang Lun quickly pulled on some clothes, yawned, and walked out of the bedroom.

He had only called out when he heard a sound from the kitchen downstairs. “Wash your hands and face. Get ready to eat!”

“Coming right away!”

Jiang Lun ran to the bathroom, washed up, and went downstairs again, only to find a table loaded with a sumptuous spread... though whether it counted as breakfast or lunch, he could not tell.

“Come on, try it. I made all of this myself!”

Chen Yingying handed him chopsticks with a delighted smile and tugged him to sit down and eat.

Jiang Lun looked up at her in astonishment. Her complexion was rosy and luminous, her skin tender and dewy. Truly, there were only exhausted oxen, never fields worn out by plowing. Looking at himself, he was half dead with fatigue; looking at her, it seemed as though she had just returned from a beauty treatment.

“Why are you looking at me? Eat up,” Chen Yingying said coyly.

“Uh... I mean...” Jiang Lun scratched his head. “Why did you make such a feast?”

“What else? To feed you until you’re full!”

Chen Yingying laughed. “I learned all these dishes recently. Try them!”

“Really?” Jiang Lun grinned and picked up his chopsticks at once. “Whom did you learn from?”

“I downloaded a cooking app on my phone and learned by following it!”

She smiled. “Taste it first, then talk.”

“Okay!”

Jiang Lun lifted a piece of braised pork and chewed a few times, then asked, “This was made in a pressure cooker, wasn’t it?”

“Huh? You can tell that?” Chen Yingying said in surprise.

“Heh...” Jiang Lun smiled. “I can also tell that you didn’t dare add too much salt.”

“Yes! I was afraid it would come out too salty!”

Chen Yingying chuckled as she sat back down, picked up a piece herself, and then frowned. “Huh? So sweet?”

“It’s fine. We’ll make do and eat it,” Jiang Lun said.

He was happy now. His mouth never stopped moving. Whether the dishes were good or bad, they were his wife’s heartfelt effort.

After eating, Jiang Lun logged onto Weibo, and as expected, the new album had caused a stir.

In addition to the traditional physical album sales at bookstores and music media superstores in major cities, it was also available on major digital sales platforms such as Dangguo.com, Amazon Online, Jingdong, and Taotao Mall. Eda’s own e-commerce platform and the official website of Rainy Day Music had also opened sales channels.

The only difference was that the official version did not include the gifts from the presale edition, so the price was naturally not high, only forty-five yuan per album. Purchases made through Eda’s own e-commerce platform and the official Rainy Day website also came with free shipping.

At present, the only places online where one could listen to the album’s songs were Eda’s own Yiting Music, plus the partnered CC Music and Five-Star Music Network.