A grand feast for the Chinese entertainment industry

Chapter 19 Let me first clarify a rumor.

Wow, I heard you wrote the lyrics in five minutes and arranged the music in ten!

"What's wrong? Is it difficult?"

"Don't say things like that, it'll make people furious!"

"Actually, I just filled it in randomly! She wanted to embarrass me, ha, how ridiculous. She said she would teach me how to kiss, but when she found out I wasn't afraid, she became shy instead. Really... I just filled it in randomly to get rid of her!"

"Come on! That word is so beautiful! Everyone who saw it praised it, saying it was wonderfully written!"

"When you make your new album, I'll send you a poem too!"

"Sure! I'll definitely ask you! But it's not just one lyric, you need to write a few songs for me! You know, I love R&B, and my last album wasn't very successful... but I still want to do more!"

"Never mind then, just pretend I didn't say anything!"

“Hey…Ah Lu…”

"But I don't want to write songs for others!"

"Please help me, can I have a kiss?"

"Oh my god...you...rumors can kill people!"

The time was the afternoon of April 4th, and the location was the activity room of Rock Records. Today, Su Huilun's new album production team was treating everyone to a meal. It is said that Rock Records often holds these kinds of small events where everyone can come and eat, take whatever they want, and relax.

The so-called "hosting a party" is just serving pastries, egg tarts, fruit, chocolates, and the like, euphemistically called a buffet, but it doesn't actually cost much. Lin Jianlu didn't originally want to come. He finished filming the music video for "Fairy Tale" yesterday, and he had a day off today. He was flying to Hong Kong early tomorrow morning, but Chen Shuhua called to invite him, so he had no choice but to come.

They were immediately entangled upon arrival, and the two huddled in a corner of the activity room, whispering to each other.

There are two big rumors flying around at Rolling Stone right now: one is that Lin Jianlu's first kiss was just taken by Liu Ruoying, but he is still a virgin and very weak. Beautiful ladies who like weak and handsome guys should hurry up and go for it, there is a chance; the other is that Su Huilun exchanged a top-notch lyric for just one kiss, very cheap!

What kind of ridiculous rumors are these!

"Everyone's here, so I want to make a serious statement to dispel a rumor: my lyrics aren't sold for that low price. Don't think you can trade a kiss for a song lyric... that's a rumor!"

The activity room wasn't large, but it was still nearly a hundred square meters. Sofas and coffee tables were casually placed everywhere, resembling scattered little salons. At that moment, there were more than thirty people eating and chatting here.

Lin Jianlu's words immediately drew a burst of laughter from the room.

Everyone knows the rumor is false, it's just a joke, but everyone also knows that Lin Jianlu's pretentious denial is just another joke—which is actually quite funny.

Su Huilun's face turned bright red, a rare sight for her.

When Lin Jianlu looked over, she made an extremely fierce expression and waved her fist.

"Ah Lu, please help me!"

"You said last time that we're already good friends! Write me a few songs!"

"How about an EP first? If you help me with it, I think Brother Duan will agree to let me do a whole R&B album, but if you don't help me with it, he probably won't agree to let me do it at all. But an EP is fine!"

Oh my... It seems to be a song called "Lemon Tree", which immediately created a broken window effect. However, before anyone else could speak, Chen Shuhua had already started to get involved.

The kind you can't shake off.

We've talked about it before, and Lao Xue has mentioned it too. We also had a small gathering at Li Zongsheng's house before, and a few of them brought it up as well.

Chen Shuhua has been obsessed with R&B for the past two years and has always wanted to make an album entirely in the R&B style!
However, none of the company's many bigwigs are skilled in R&B.

Luo Da started his career with folk songs, and his later works are often grand and sweeping, possessing a powerful, cross-dimensional humanistic quality. It can be said that his very first move already exudes the aura of a master.

Lee Tsung-sheng is known for his ability to understand women's hearts, and is later dubbed the "Grandmaster of Scumbags" online. He writes love songs with unparalleled accuracy, always expressing deep affection, comfort, and true love!
Xiao Chong is also good at writing love songs, urban love songs for men. Chen Sheng is similar—so-called pop music has two main tracks: youth pop and adult ballads. If they weren't good at these, they wouldn't have become big names!

R&B has been popular in America for more than a year or two, but it has only recently begun to become a trend and a mainstream genre. It is also attracting the attention of more and more people in the Chinese music industry, and many are interested in it, but there are still very few people who can write or produce it.

Therefore, Chen Shuhua had to look for outside help. Last year, she released an album called "Shuhua in Full Bloom". Five songs in the album, including "Love is Deeper", "Magic", and "Not Lovers, Not Friends", were written and produced by a young man who returned from abroad. That man's name is Tao Zhe.

Market feedback has been poor.

In some ways, it can even be considered a Waterloo for Chen Shuhua, who has been at the height of her career in recent years. Musicians have noticed this, and record companies and singers have gradually begun to try it out. Everyone judged that this was one of the future development directions, but the current audience of Chinese-language records is not very receptive.

Or, one could say that the localization of R&B is only just beginning, and there are currently no truly mature works that can win over fans. In today's Chinese music scene, there are far too few people who study R&B, understand R&B, and can use sophisticated R&B techniques to write R&B works that Chinese listeners will enjoy.

It can be considered that there is none.

After all, Tao Zhe is not yet a singer and is far from mature; he is just a behind-the-scenes producer labeled as "up-and-coming."

And that man... ha, when he starts to enter the music scene, he will probably feel like his luck has been taken away?
But it's highly unlikely, because Lun is talented!

I copied all his good songs, forcing him to write even more great works. Then I learned them, and traveled back in time to 2025 in my original world… Wow, you see, people really do need to travel through time…

Cough... I've gone off on a tangent.

It is precisely because of this market situation that both the internal positioning of Rolling Stone Records and the industry evaluation after the release of "Shuhua in Full Bloom" are considered to be pioneering records of an exploratory and experimental nature.

So you see, she's a princess!
Nobody blames her! The company, music critics, and fans all pampered her, allowing her to experiment, allowing her album to flop, it's okay, come back, come back!
But Chen Shuhua refused to give up; she still wanted to do R&B!

Firstly, she genuinely enjoys singing, and secondly, she believes she has already reached a high level in singing adult ballads. If she continues down that path, she can only wait for masters like Luo Dayou and Li Zongsheng to provide her with more songs of the caliber of "When Dreams Awaken" and "Rolling Red Dust" to rekindle her glory. Otherwise, it will be completely impossible for her to surpass or improve upon her previous achievements.

But please, Luo Dayou and Li Zongsheng are the only two in the entire Chinese music scene over the past twenty years, and their works are not always at the level of "Rolling Red Dust," otherwise they wouldn't be considered representative works. And right around the two of them, there are countless singers surrounding them, waiting to be fed...

Therefore, transformation is necessary.

They are currently in a predicament.

And wouldn't you know it, at that very moment, just when Chen Shuhua was exhausted, a guy suddenly appeared from faraway mainland China. He listened to the album and exclaimed, "Wow, isn't this R&B?!" And it sounded so good, without any of the awkwardness of American R&B being forced into Mandarin!

After getting to know him, I discovered that he was not only talented and handsome, but also witty and humorous, and exceptionally interesting. It made me intuitively know that working with him would be very comfortable and enjoyable.

The crucial point is... someone broke a window!

Five minutes later, he received the melody and immediately wrote down the lyrics for Su Huilun.

That line, "A lonely afternoon, when the wind makes every tree want to dance," is absolutely breathtaking, so of course I had to chat with them right away. "Please help me out, three songs, just three, okay..."

Lin Jianlu leaned closer, as if she wanted to say something private.

Chen Shuhua was overjoyed and quickly went over as well.

"You have to pick me up from the airport next time I come here!"

"Great! Sure! I'll definitely go!"

"Don't wear that long skirt today, wear those jeans from last time! The really tight ones!"

"Huh? Why?"

"What's it to you why I'm doing this! Just tell me if it's okay or not!"

"Sure, no problem!"

(End of this chapter)