Cantonese songs: texts have no meaning, just rubbish ?

[Tom]

a friend of mine is Chinese, Cantonese speaking (but first language is
English).

I showed him some Cantonese CDs and he listened to the songs
of Ekin Cheng, Kelly Chen, Jackie Chan .....

I asked him, what are they singing about and he answered, that
he doesn´t know.
the words are Cantonese, but the text has no meaning, just
senseless one word after another.

He said it´s rubbish, he has no clue what the song is about.

he thought, it might be, that the texts are written in Chinese
characters , but the characters are Mandarin.
when you read the characters loud in Cantonese, it might be, that
there is no sense any more.

Does anybody know, why these Canto-Pop songs have no sense
in the texts ?


when the singers sing so many songs, with just meaningless words, how
can they remember them in a concert ?

what about the fans ( cantonese speaking):
when they want to sing along, how do they do it ?

[sfboy]

do you seriously believe the songs are all rubbish?
the only 'rubbish' is what your friend is telling you. heehee
obviously his knowledge of cantonese is very limited if he cannot draw out any meaning from hk songs.
it's true that most of the hk songs are written with chinese lyrics but they are not specifically mandarin or cantonese. it is standard written chinese and most singers can easily understand the words and the meaning of the song.

you must remember that chinese characters are recognizable by Chinese whether they're from Hong Kong or Shanghai or Beijing or Harbin etc... reading the same characters aloud in a different dialect will not render them meaningless.

[xiau yen zi]

I´m the same opinion like sfboy. You can´t say HK songs are all rubbish. I like chinese songs more than loud musics e.g. ACDC, Metallica etc.
Chinese music are generally very sofly.

[Mark]

sfboy sez'd:
heehee

lol. that reminds me of the joke:
How do Hokkien fish laugh?

hee hee

:p

[Nikita Chan]

Though I don't think that all HK popsongs are rubbish, but I have to admit that nowadays it's really hard to find a good song with meaningful lyrics compared to 10 years ago. The lyrics are now only about love love love! Nothing new, nothing special! Not that I don't listen to those songs, but I only listen to the melody of the songs. I mean, nowadays every cute looking teenager ( though they can not sing....but the fans don't even noticed it.) can be a "singer". Take Twins or Cookies. That's really crap ( sorry for offending anyone, but it's my opinion! ). The record companies just know the right mixture to make a profitable record, and that is PACKAGE! Write loads of songs, release as much records as you can. Coz no matter the record is good or not, it will sell of they are cute. I know they have a lots of fans, but their fans are all very young. For them it's all about the looks. They don't even bother to think about the meaning of the songs they have learned it by heart.

[Tavis Allen]

Welcome to capitalism! What really amazes me is that the US has been a bit slower with the whole cross-marketing thing. I mean Andy Lau, Leon Lai, Jackie Cheung have been doing songs and movies for 15+ years. But yes, it does seem that the quality of content in HK popsongs has deteriated (sp?) into "cuteness" But on the flipside, what do singers have to write about. In the US, people will complain about life and sell records. You just don't hear much "bitching" in HK songs.

[Nikita Chan]

Well....there are some "bitching" in HK songs. But the popgroups who sing about this kind of topic will be censored. This censorship is taken into account by the tv-stations and radio-stations. They want to keep their reputation high, and they don't want criticism from the media for broadcasting such songs.

[Sum Won]

Actually, what bothers me about Hong Kong, is that they don't have much "original" content. "Beyond" and "Swing" (formerly "snowman") were worthy exceptions, but too bad you don't hear much from them anymore... TaiWan on the other hand has more "original" content on the other hand, with most of their people starting out singing at pubs and making their own songs to "make ends meat", then being discovered by some record company. Even the very few songs from mainland Chinese bands, and Singapore's pop singers have more original content. Some of the stuff you hear maybe tiny fictitional stories, and seem like "useless stories" to some, but are a different taste to the typical love songs you hear. Basically, Hong Kong's fallen behind in the "originality" section of the Asian music industry.

Thank goodness "LMF" is around...

[dude]

yeaah... LMF is da bomb