Saturday, August 11, 2007

Classic All-Star Songs

I was listening to Chinese songs in 1ting.com (which I strongly recommend for online streaming Chinese songs) when I stumbled upon an old classic, 明天会更好. I am sure every single Chinese must have heard of this song before, but I reckon that like myself, a lot of people in my generation do not know much about the charity song recorded in 1985. Produced around the same time as my birth date, the song featured the greatest singing talents of the era including 蔡琴苏芮潘越云甄妮黄莺莺陈淑桦齐豫张艾嘉张清芳蓝心湄余天费玉清齐秦巫启贤李宗盛童安格 among others. It was said to be inspired by the US all-star charity song "we are the world", another classic which raised hundreds of million dollars for the 84-85 Ethiopian famine.

Round about 2003, at the peak of the SARS global epidemic, dozens of singers again came together in Taiwan and produced "手牵手", a touching song which called for courage and resolution in the combat of the deadly disease.

Listening to those songs, I can't help but to be amazed by the veteran artists' voices and the power of music in conveying public messages. Sometimes I wonder why our artists don't put up more of such efforts - if I were a singer, being involved with such communal efforts would be one of the most proudest thing I could ever do in my life. Being involved in such charity efforts would mean much more than almost everything else an artist does, combined.

Here, I shall just end this brief post by sharing the three aforementioned songs:

明天会更好: Lyrics
手牵手: Lyrics
We are the world: Lyrics

7 comments:

Unknown said...

i do know about the SARS song, different version, say by only 3-4 ppl as i remember.

hope my friend can get the original version for me as i can't read chinese words.

english oldies i have a lot, about 2 Gb. but charity song not much. as u said, ppl in our generation dunno much about charity songs.

day-dreamer said...

I like both 手牵手 and We Are The World but I'm not sure if I've heard 明天会更好. Haha!

crushedguava said...

手牵手 is the best, if only because it was a collaboration by David Tao and Wang Li Hom

RJ said...

明天会更好 is such a classic!! It's always in my favorite list and I just love it. =)

Oh well, I've always been listening to Chinese oldies, since I am old too. :p

changyang1230 said...

yushi: Yeah agreed, those are really good songs!

day-dreamer: Haha you've never heard 明天会更好? I guess I am the last generation to be familiar with that song then. Probably they stopped playing that song the year you were born. :P

crushedguava: Both of them are the gems of the chinese music industry. :)

ren jie: Haha we are both old men eh! :P

Anonymous said...

good blog.. 手牵手 is a nice song.. salam hangat..

changyang1230 said...

Glad that you liked it. :)