Li Zhi#
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Recently, the Chinese singer I have been listening to the most is Li Zhi. When I couldn't continue studying during final exam review, I often listened to his songs to take a break, so I feel it is necessary to write an article to record it. Including my feelings when listening to his songs, interesting lyrics, and others' evaluations, etc.
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The First Time#
When I heard "Rehe" in college, it felt very familiar. I checked my MP3 player and realized that I had copied it from a classmate back in my first year of high school. I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered this, maybe it was fate. Because Li Zhi had studied at Southeast University. And I chose to come to Southeast University in Nanjing without knowing about Li Zhi.
Songs#
As for his songs, I don't have much feeling for those that talk about love. I prefer these few songs:
"Rehe", "Them", "The People Don't Need Freedom". The reason I like these few songs may not be because of politics, because the proportion of love songs in Chinese songs is too high, and compared to them, these few songs feel very good. Let me briefly talk about my feelings for each of them.
It is a simple description of place names and scenes, but it has strong expressiveness. Just by listening to the song, you can imagine the environment of Rehe Road. This type of song is not very common.
This is probably my favorite Li Zhi song at the moment. The lyrics are simple, and the melody seems to be too, I don't understand. It's very easy to sing along to. But the lyrics are sharp.
The lyrics of this song are also relatively simple, but the live performance is fantastic. They repeatedly sing "The people don't need freedom, this is the best era" in chorus, but Li Zhi gives almost half of the time to the individual performances of the members of his band. He calls them out one by one, and this is the first time I have seen this kind of performance, I find it very stunning. It says that the people don't need freedom, but with the freedom of the people (band members), they can have excellent performances.
People#
Watching recordings of his concerts several times, I found them to be magnificent, with many people participating in the performances. Including the audience, you can see that they are very engaged in the footage. There are many people in the band, which is something I rarely see, because the bands I usually listen to are almost always four people, like Queen and The Beatles. But this performance format is also good.
As for his ban, I tried to search for it and still find it inexplicable. His several sensitive songs are considered early works. But after that, he still held New Year's Eve concerts for several years and collaborated with NetEase Cloud Music. But one day, they said he was banned. It makes it so that you can only listen to his songs on YouTube. I don't understand.
Blog#
Today, I stumbled upon his blog on the internet.
Please Call Me Fool: Half is Flame
Li Zhi Official Website
It's quite interesting.
Here are a few points recorded here:
- His pricing concept for his works is like this.
>Free download, free pricing - From 1997 to 1999, he studied how to become an engineer at Southeast University, but failed.
- The slogan of the blog is
>Not necessarily correct, but never lie
A Quote#
I watched a documentary about him - Li Zhi: This World Will Be Fine, and one quote from it left a deep impression on me.
We started discussing a question since Jinan, there are two perspectives. One is: music is just music, if you want to change, if you're awesome, you can change it with music itself, you're an awesome musician, you can kill them without saying a word. If I had that talent, I would also want to do that. I don't need to do anything, I just need to do music well and put it there, and scare you to death. But you don't have it, so music becomes a tool. -- Li Zhi
This quote makes me feel that he lives with great insight, at least he has a deep understanding of music.
PS#
- On March 30, 2023, a film crew came to our university for a roadshow. Before going, I was a bit curious why they chose this place. But later, when the director went on stage, he said that he had a special feeling for Nanjing because of a Nanjing citizen. At that moment, the whole audience had a tacit laugh. I also heard someone directly mention Li Zhi. The movie is a good one, thanks to Li Zhi, our alumnus.