The Mortals Behind China’s ‘God Songs’

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&#x2F;person is enthralling&#x2F;magical&#x2F;enchanting&#x2F;hypnotizing.<p>神曲 would be the kind of songs that are so hypnotizing that you can&#x27;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 <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=U7U0EirV2Hw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=U7U0EirV2Hw</a>

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&#x27;s a CCP-approved, strictly censored news organization[1], like most other news sources based in China.<p>Really don&#x27;t want to get into details, but some articles[2] don&#x27;t even acknowledge all viewpoints, which makes it clear that there&#x27;s some censorship going on behind the scenes.<p>Despite that, I have to agree the OP is definitely interesting and relevant to HN.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;foreignpolicy.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;03&#x2F;china-explained-sixth-tone-is-chinas-latest-party-approved-outlet-humanizing-news&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;foreignpolicy.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;06&#x2F;03&#x2F;china-explained-sixth-t...</a><p>[2]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sixthtone.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;1004929&#x2F;user-concerns-over-facial-recognition-high%2C-china-survey-says" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sixthtone.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;1004929&#x2F;user-concerns-over-fac...</a>

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.

The amount of good Chinese music out there is amazing.<p>If you&#x27;re open taste-tasting modern Chinese pop music, I would like to recommend:<p>- A-Lin: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCURRzgKx4DkVozbOjFflMpg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCURRzgKx4DkVozbOjFflMpg</a><p>- Mayday: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCQyweuVOAh3NHGKDDadRSbg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCQyweuVOAh3NHGKDDadRSbg</a><p>- JJ Lin: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCd91HSXKhsIv8PIjNrDByHQ" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCd91HSXKhsIv8PIjNrDByHQ</a><p>- Joker Xue: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCeHAsNPoMw7xfNf0pH-CmJA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCeHAsNPoMw7xfNf0pH-CmJA</a><p>They are all on spotify if you look them up too. From Spotify&#x2F;YouTube you can use related artists&#x2F;playlists to get into more variety.

Immediately remind me of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=IEfQ_9DIItI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=IEfQ_9DIItI</a>, where the scores in the movie are constantly borrowed&#x2F;changed from known good version.<p>Also: the music in Iron Man 1 eventually became part of Game of Throne theme song: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;MovieDetails&#x2F;comments&#x2F;e81vr8&#x2F;18_seconds_into_mark_ii_on_the_iron_man_2008&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;MovieDetails&#x2F;comments&#x2F;e81vr8&#x2F;18_sec...</a>

I like the idea of Jung&#x27;s &quot;Collective Unconscious&quot; 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&#x27;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.

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.

&quot;God Songs&quot;?<p>This is the worst translation ever.<p>Even &quot;Magic Songs&quot; is better.

It&#x27;ll be interesting to see the long term effect of this circular dependency between producers and consumers in arts.<p>Why do we like what we like? What creates a trend? Can you create a trend by observing what&#x27;s trending?