
The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’ - cow9
http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1004412
======
theseadroid
OT but I find the translation from 神曲 to God Songs very inaccurate. The word 神
has many meanings in Chinese other than referring to gods. Some related
expression such as 这玩意真神 or 这人真神 would be more properly translated into: this
thing/person is enthralling/magical/enchanting/hypnotizing.

神曲 would be the kind of songs that are so hypnotizing that you can't direct
your attention elsewhere. And those songs might not necessarily be nice songs.
They are referred to as 魔性洗脑神曲 sometimes, which is something like enchanted
brainwashing hypnotizing songs in English. One of the first songs being
associated with this term is
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7U0EirV2Hw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7U0EirV2Hw)

~~~
rococode
The Japanese definition for 神曲 (kamikyoku) is just "incredible song" which I
think is probably the intended modern Chinese definition in these contexts (I
speak both).

I'm not sure if it's an example of wasei-kango [1] (Japanese-invented words
being incorporated into Chinese, i.e. "phone", "bicycle", etc.), but 神曲 has
been used to describe online videos of Japanese songs for at least 10 years
with little descriptive meaning beyond "this is a great song" (for example,
this medley of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon soundtrack from 2007 [2]).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasei-
kango](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasei-kango)

[2]
[https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm1396236](https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm1396236)

~~~
rangibaby
Using 神 like that is the same as “god-tier” in English

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applecrazy
Kind of OT, but the media outlet that published this article kind of gave me a
weird vibe. Then I looked it up, and apparently it's a CCP-approved, strictly
censored news organization[1], like most other news sources based in China.

Really don't want to get into details, but some articles[2] don't even
acknowledge all viewpoints, which makes it clear that there's some censorship
going on behind the scenes.

Despite that, I have to agree the OP is definitely interesting and relevant to
HN.

[1]: [https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/03/china-explained-
sixth-t...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/03/china-explained-sixth-tone-
is-chinas-latest-party-approved-outlet-humanizing-news/)

[2]: [http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1004929/user-concerns-over-
fac...](http://www.sixthtone.com/news/1004929/user-concerns-over-facial-
recognition-high%2C-china-survey-says)

------
raldi
This reminds me of the story of MP3.com. The creator ran a search engine,
which never got especially popular, but it was popular enough to demonstrate
the sudden growth of that term, and so he registered the domain name without
even knowing what it meant.

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tony
The amount of good Chinese music out there is amazing.

If you're open taste-tasting modern Chinese pop music, I would like to
recommend:

\- A-Lin:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCURRzgKx4DkVozbOjFflMpg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCURRzgKx4DkVozbOjFflMpg)

\- Mayday:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQyweuVOAh3NHGKDDadRSbg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQyweuVOAh3NHGKDDadRSbg)

\- JJ Lin:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd91HSXKhsIv8PIjNrDByHQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd91HSXKhsIv8PIjNrDByHQ)

\- Joker Xue: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeHAsNPoMw7xfNf0pH-
CmJA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeHAsNPoMw7xfNf0pH-CmJA)

They are all on spotify if you look them up too. From Spotify/YouTube you can
use related artists/playlists to get into more variety.

------
yegle
Immediately remind me of
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEfQ_9DIItI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEfQ_9DIItI),
where the scores in the movie are constantly borrowed/changed from known good
version.

Also: the music in Iron Man 1 eventually became part of Game of Throne theme
song:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/e81vr8/18_sec...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/e81vr8/18_seconds_into_mark_ii_on_the_iron_man_2008/)

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rhema
I like the idea of Jung's "Collective Unconscious" and think about it as
ephemeral culture seems to briefly stabilize. Looking up popular keywords from
search engines is one approach for understanding mass movements about what
people are paying attention to. While I don't feel that art should be
automated, or even rigorously formalized, that does not appear to be what is
happening here. Instead, these writers rooms still have to go through the
interpretive process, applying the same mundane thought processes to make
anything really work.

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analyst74
When I watched the latest star wars show with some friends, we started
noticing all the meme-able moments, now I wonder if those were introduced
intentionally too.

~~~
endymi0n
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyetic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyetic)

~~~
applecrazy
We should call the meme version of these type of works "memetic" works.

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xmly
"God Songs"?

This is the worst translation ever.

Even "Magic Songs" is better.

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didibus
It'll be interesting to see the long term effect of this circular dependency
between producers and consumers in arts.

Why do we like what we like? What creates a trend? Can you create a trend by
observing what's trending?

~~~
tomcam
Yes, this has been done in the pop music world for at least 100 years. Irving
Berlin analyzed top of the chart songs so that he can learn how to construct
his own.

