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Liu Huan is known as the "Godfather of Music". How many best-selling albums has he released?

Let me talk about how Mr. Liu Huan became a god. It is also because of his great emphasis on original music. From the first season when it was still called "I Am a Singer", the program team began to invite Liu Huan, and the invitation lasted for seven years. The director flew to the United States twice to visit him. In the seventh season of "Singer" this year, Liu Huan finally agreed to appear on this variety show because Hunan TV and Liu Huan will jointly establish the "Liu Huan Original Music Fund". The foundation will start from 2020 and start each year. On January 11th, those who have made outstanding contributions to China's creative music will be awarded one million RMB. Liu Huan smiled and said that he was "cheated" by this original stock fund.

When audiences born in the 1990s and 2000s talk about Liu Huan, they may always make complaints about it and imitate Liu Huan in singing a few lines of "Song of a Hero". They do not understand the importance of these two words in the Chinese music scene. What does it mean... The fact is that Liu Huan is not only the most stable and ever-changing fashion singer in the past 30 years, but also the best leader of original music in the pop music world! How did Liu Huan become a god?

In the 1980s, Liu Huan studied at the School of International Relations. He loved crosstalk performances as a child. He took an elective course in Dutch literature in college, but eventually fell in love with music. Liu Huan has been very fond of traditional musical instruments since she was a child. She often used her lunch breaks to go to the music teacher's office to play traditional musical instruments.

When I was studying in a high school in Tianjin, one of my classmates made up his mind to enter a music school for the college entrance examination this year. When I was in my second year of high school, the school had a grand piano, and it was the first time I saw him play in front of me. Chopin's "Butterfly" also made me dizzy. It turns out that this thing can be made like that...

It was only after 1983 that I started making popular music. I met so many classmates during my sophomore and junior years. When I play guitar on campus, I go to see how difficult it is to play guitar. I borrow the guitar from others during the summer, and when I get home, I become the best player in the group. Later, he began to compose and write songs by himself. I am somewhat interested in anything with human voices. Although I have never learned the singing methods of musicals, I like to listen to them. I even pay more attention to some methods of Chinese opera...

His love for traditional musical instruments has surrounded him throughout his life. After becoming famous, he collected nearly a hundred weird traditional musical instruments in his home.

After growing up, Liu Huan and a group of songwriters and writers gathered together in the Beijing International Audio and Video Art Company, a courtyard called "Big Wooden Cang" by musicians. If you have always seen a person in the service hall of "Da Mucang" playing an electronic keyboard slowly and singing English songs loudly, that is Liu Huan.

When he was about 20 years old, his singing was still a little delicate, far inferior to his favorite Bob Dylan, but in that era when singers didn’t even understand music scores, Liu Huan was so eye-catching. .

In 1988, less than ten years after the wave of educated youth returning to the city, a TV series "Snow City" starring him was released. "There is sunshine in the sky, and there is a month in the water..." When Liu Huan's heart-moving voice came, many people burst into tears. For some people, Liu Huan's singing can only be understood by those who have gone to "send educated youths to the countryside" with their ideals in mind, to guard the borders, and to reclaim wasteland.

Another well-known song, "Can't Live Without You", became popular again after 25 years due to Huang Qishan's singing. And this is Liu Huan's first time recording a song for a TV series. Exactly the same, there was more than one TV series that Liu Huan was optimistic about at that time.

After recording music for "Snow City", "Undercover Police" found him again. After musician Lei Lei wrote the theme song "Young Aspirations Don't Say Sorrows", the first thing that came to mind was Liu Huanlai singing it. Liu Huan's excellent voice quality, pitch and appeal left a deep impression on her. After Lei Lei persuaded the deputy director Zhao Baogang, the two of them worked hard to find out where Liu Huan lived, so they decided to visit.

Going through the dormitories, looking for the one with the most beer bottles at the door, they arrived at Liu Huan’s dormitory. In the crowded room, there was only a bed and a table. There is no area where I landed.

"They handed the song to me, and I looked at it and said, this key is too low, it's 4 degrees low. You have to change it and orchestrate it again." Liu Huan, who was suffering from a cold, tried playing the guitar. After singing "Young Aspirations Don't Say Sorrows" once, the simple singing skills were more contagious than the popular bel canto singing method at that time, and Liu Huan's singing on the spot was more enthusiastic and sufficient.

In Beijing at that time, "Plain Clothes Police" was played every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, "Snow City", "The Sun in My Heart", "Can't Live Without You", The songs "Young Aspirations Don't Speak of Sorrows" are all over the streets.

At the opening ceremony of the 1990 Asian Games, the entire audience couldn't help but sing a chorus with Liu Huan and Wei Wei: "In Asia, mountains are expensive heads, in Asia, rivers are like hot blood..." This song The song "Asian Heroes" is not the anthem of the Asian Games, it is just a promotional music, but its popularity far exceeded the original anthem.

While recording this song, Liu Huan stayed up in the studio for two days and two nights, but could not find the mentality. So the composer Xu Peidong went out and bought a few cans of Yanjing beer. After opening the cork, Liu Huan took a sip and sang a line. Under the influence of alcohol, his mood suddenly improved. He sang the whole song, which made people feel excited.

Liu Huan and Wei Wei, the two most popular singers at that time, also became well-known for this song.

I followed you for tens of thousands of miles, but you didn’t care. You didn’t seem to be in my dream. In the dream, you were my only one... In the 1990s, our country entered a period of France The new wave - the "Hong Kong immigration wave", under the tide, are the skyscrapers and exotic customs in the hearts of millions of people. This song "Question Thousands of Times" is undoubtedly the most appropriate situational music of the times.

When Liu Huan was composing this song, he moved a complete set of MIDI equipment to the hotel room, and talked about creation with Director Feng every day to find inspiration. In the end, in more than a month, *** created 7 songs and more than 90 pieces of music. When I was filming "Beijingers in New York", I didn't have much money, and Liu Huan basically didn't earn a penny from arranging the music for the show. But he was still very attentive and invested a lot of passion. We lived in the same room in a restaurant at that time. He moved everything into the room, talked about production with me every day, and even started creating all night long. ——Director Feng

Although he first came into contact with classical music, when creating, he was never limited to one kind of music method. He tried a little bit of rock music, and also tried something like FUNKY design style, but the final decision is a little more moderate. It was originally decided to use orchestral music for the end of the movie, but later I found that the effect was not very good, so I chose electronic sound.

Throughout the 1990s, Liu Huan's voice was heard in the well-known TV series "Water Margin", "Swordsman", "Lotus Lantern", and "Journey to the West", and he I also continue to try and improve in this kind of creation. With excellent creative talents, wonderful singing, and the support of TV series, Liu Huan's reputation reached its peak in an instant.

In recent years, Liu Huan's original soundtrack for the TV series "The Legend of Zhen Huan" has once again received unanimous praise from the audience and the industry. In fact, Liu Huan has watched the entire 76-episode TV series three times. , I also personally went to Hengdian, Zhejiang to see the acting castle, because "the music I made for you has a three-dimensional effect. If your house is actually bigger, my music will become smaller, and it will not sound right, or it will sound wrong." It's even worse to come here. "Liu Huan is the hermit, Liu Huan is the teacher."

Liu Huan often said: "Music is very big, I am not big, and my insignificant things are not worth disturbing the music." Therefore, he has always maintained a certain distance from the outside world. There was a time when Liu Huan was disturbed by hearing his own singing on TV every day. In 1991, he was banned for being "late" to a CCTV show. It happened to be this opportunity that allowed him to calm down, examine himself, and think about music.

As a result, he gradually declined invitations from others, and gradually, few people asked Liu Huan to sing. Liu Huan also set many standards for commercial performances. He said: "If the performance area is more than two hours away from the airport, I will not go; if there is a meal below during the performance, I will not go; I will not go to the meeting; if I do not pay the full payment, I will not go." The extra tax was not paid." After that, Liu Huan was able to return to music and work hard on creation. He is more carefree and casual.

Liu Huan is one of the first musicians in mainland China who can use computers to arrange, arrange and produce music. As early as the 1990s, he loved tinkering with machinery and equipment and producing his own music. When the "Singer" column team went to Liu Huan's home for an interview in the first issue, Liu Huan took everyone to visit the factory where he was originally going to build a recording studio. It was filled with all kinds of music-making equipment that had been replaced by the times: From the desktop computer he bought in 1992 to write the background music for "Beijingers in New York", to the iMac G3, to the mixer from the simulated analog audio era...

Liu Huan, a Cancer, has a habit of "one-handed" "It's all done": "It's been many, many years since I made music for a TV series because I was too tired. After dozens of episodes and more than a hundred pieces of music, I was always worried about others being involved, so in the later stages I still have to follow, this kind of music, dozens of episodes of music, I put them in one by one. I didn’t need anything. I did it all by myself. Logically speaking, they should have a music composer behind it.”

Liu Huan has an aura like a master of art, which makes it easy for everyone to distinguish him from other singers. He has released only a handful of solo albums, most of which were created for TV series, and the rest were released as latest singles. The rest of the time, he will teach. Since 1985, when he went to Ningxia Shizuishan Mountain to teach, Liu Huan has been teaching music, teaching "History of Western Music" at the School of International Relations and the University of International Business and Economics.

Liu Huan said: "Until I sang "Asian Heroes", I didn't think of myself as a singer. I didn't seem to take responsibility at all. I felt that I was in an amateur group. If I did well, I would be good. No one said he was not doing well. Even so, every time he composed and sang, he had a very high level and high efficiency. Gao Xiaosong once said that Liu Huan is the first person who dares to change his rhythm over the years. Little did they know that Gao Xiaosong not only did not blame him, but also expressed deep admiration.

I remember the first collaboration between the two, which was in 1995. Gao Xiaosong recorded audio for Liu Huan. After singing, Gao Xiaosong said, wait a minute, I will write you a chord with a third lower. , you sing the harmony again after you finish writing.

Liu Huan said, is it necessary to write music scores for harmony sounds? I'll let you sing it immediately! Then he sang it flawlessly. Liu Huan: "Save original music."

In the summer of 2012, Liu Huan served as a teacher on "The Voice of China". This move is quite surprising, because Liu Huan has never been interested in talent shows and rarely participates in entertainment programs. Liu Huan is the most professional and attentive one among the four teachers. He said, I especially hope they can broadcast some more professional comments from our four teachers, or some practical opinions on music, although these things may not necessarily attract attention.

In terms of effectiveness, Liu Huan has successively served as a teacher for variety shows such as "Chinese Good Songs", "China's New Singing", and "China Star". In this kind of variety show, Liu Huan has repeatedly emphasized "originality" - "Without originality, our popular music will become nothing." When "Chinese Good Songs" ended its third season, Liu Huan once stated in WeChat Moments His grief over the loss of this original variety show:

He said that our record industry system is so bad that we can still keep a singer as old as me on the stage, suppressing young people. He just wants to discover some singers who are truly capable and bring new strength to Chinese singers. In recent years, styles such as "idol training" and "popular little fresh meat stars" have become popular. Liu Huan said that traffic is not equivalent to art.

“The so-called Internet buzzword culture in the past two years is related to our promotion methods. For example, in the Internet era, data is very good, but does it mean that we should completely use traffic to guide our work? There are some very good actors and singers who cannot bring in traffic, which is indeed a very real problem, but what does traffic mean? It does not necessarily represent art. For example, I believe that many people will watch American TV series, but I will never. I believe that American TV dramas are something that is monitored through traffic, and it has its own set of management systems.”

Under the guidance of traffic thinking, each fan is happy and fashionable in his or her own circle. Liu Huan is very resistant to this situation becoming "only music for young people" and "music only for a certain group of fans". "Popular music is actually for everyone to listen to, and that's why it is promoted in this way." This has led to a strange situation where people in their forties pretend to be in their thirties and sing songs from their twenties to teenagers. This should not be the case. ”

Liu Huan bluntly said that original music has already reached a crisis point, so his idea is to "save original music." In 2020, "Singer" was able to invite Liu Huan to join as an agent, precisely because of its high emphasis on originality. After "Singer" announced Liu Huan's joining as an agent in 2020, many viewers complained, "Everyone competes at will, but I believe that the final winner will all be Liu Huan." Of course, this is not necessarily the case, and the excitement of variety shows depends on the whole process, not the results. But there is no doubt that Hunan TV and Liu Huan’s promotion of originality is a great thing.

We have been waiting for a new era of Chinese singers for a long time.