imomus | Ballads of massive acceptance

Ballads of massive acceptance

"By day, Deng Xiaoping rules China, but by night, Deng Lijun rules."

Deng Lijun -- better known as Teresa Teng -- was a huge Asian Torch star right up to her early death, in 1995, of an asthma attack. Big sentimental power ballads with fabulously unwieldy titles like "The Moon Represents My Heart" and "Surrender Yourself To Time Going On" made her the ultimate Karaoke Queen.

Absurdist Asian Torch is the genre label for my Ocky Milk album (if you don't believe me, stick the CD in your drive and load up iTunes). Just like Teresa Teng (although perhaps more deliberately), on Ocky I sing several Chinesey-sounding power ballads which combine truly heartfelt, universal emotions with odd, clumsily-translated lyrics. Torch on its own is pure emotional manipulation, but put it together with some random confusion, some puzzling perplexity and some engineered cultural misunderstanding and you get... well, some kind of art.

My yen for Teng (and, speaking of yen, she was huge in Japan -- Hisae's mum, for instance, rates her the best singer of all time) probably began when I visited Hong Kong two years ago and my dear friend and guide, designer Cheung Lik, presented me with a Teresa Teng double CD.

Now that YouTube has more and more stuff (recent Momus adds include the original Hairstyle of the Devil promo and a weird manga mashup for Situation Comedy Blues), I thought I'd make a little Video Tour of the Torch of Teng here on Click Opera. In these video versions, it isn't just the songs that thrill, but the sets, constructed for communist state television shows we can only dream about -- and yet which aren't so far from Western showbiz models, either.

The typical Teng ballad combines melodramatic 1950s songwriting (think Roy Orbison) with Chinese melodies and 1980s production values -- tinkling synth fills and reverberant Rototoms. The lyrics detail the sufferings of a Plain Jane narrator filled with trust, devotion and loyal stoicism in the face of unhappy love affairs with men who keep promising to leave their wives for her... but never quite do. She's there, keeping her heart good, waiting, surrendering herself to the passage of time, never getting bitter.

First, here's a karaoke-style fly-by of clips and sleeves featuring Teng (she looks rather like Kumi Okamoto in some of them):

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Now let's rewind to Teng as a cute beat boom teen, a yéyé girl confessing that "I Smile Whenever I See You". (Dig those crazy zooms, comrade!)

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Here she is singing her biggest Japanese hit, "Surrender Yourself To Time Going On" (Toki No Nagare Ni Mi Wo Makase), with its message "go with the flow (of tears)":

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"Mei Hua" has amazing studio scenography, as imperial palace gates and mist part to reveal a snow scene with full atmospheric effects:

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In "Chat and Smile" Teng plays "Superlegitimacy Cosplay", dressing as a cook, a parking warden, a nurse and snooker player:

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Finally, the moving "Ode for Republic of China", which takes Teng's "ballads of massive acceptance" into the political realm (she sang it in Taiwan):

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Well, the ones I could get to work were quite charming, but what I really want from a power-ballard are upwardly mobile key-changes and plenty of 'em...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKSuG1LOaYI

Wow, is she crying in "Mei Hua"? Is it from a contest or something?

She is indeed crying, and from both eyes.

I don't know what the show was.

That is why ballads are nicer to view, instead of the "dancey-trancey" things, because the singer might be crying!

It looks like the one right before that (the "Surrender Yourself" one) that she is on a show, too, because she has a shocked expression and covers her mouth in emotional response to whatever the announcer is saying. I thought it was sweet.

This made me go watch your two videos. Now I understand better why you're critical of Justin. :) (However, it must be a genetic thing that you Curries right the catchiest songs ever. "Frilly Military" will be stuck in my head for at least the next two years.)

Yeah the one where she's crying is actually "Surrender Yourself To Time Going On" (Taiwanese here. lol). In that clip she's just won one of the biggest record awards in Japan so it's understandable why she looks quite emo there. :)

maybe shes feeling emo from singing the patriotic song?! or it could just be the smoke.....

My mum too is a great fan of hers... her songs bring back lots of childhood memories for me.

My mom looks like Teresa Teng -- almost uncanny. I saw a few of her albums in my parent's record collection as a kid. Thanks for the background information & clips you posted!!

these videos are such a treat! the last time i watched her in a music video was around the time when she had passed away and the genius people at the laser disc company had come out with a best of karaoke compilation which my parents went googoogaga over. my parents loOOOoOove teresa tang (of course). the video that stood out most for me was the first one you posted, also there's a funny one in which she covers celine dion's, "power of love"(talk about power ballad) in the video she's sporting corn rolls but looking classy nonetheless.

and the song i didn't know about until faye wong covered it, is i think a classic; "wishing we will last forever":

visiting teresa deng's grave a couple of years ago was an interesting experience. they had some rocks with hidden speakers inside that played teresa deng songs continuously (presumably 24/7). and just to add to the other comment that mentioned wong faye, teresa deng was a huge huge huge influence on wong faye.

what, no video for 'yue liang dai biao wo de xin' ? btw, while it may have a clunky title in English - 'The Moon Represents My Heart' - the title is beautiful in Mandarin.

i remember when teresa teng died, many people sort of hailed faye wong as her heir (and some said reincarnation, given that faye wong became popular around the time teresa teng died).

Teresa Teng became hard-coded in my DNA after countless car rides spent listening to her on the cassette tape player in the mid 1980s. My mum always said that Teresa Teng was popular because she had the classically sweet soprano voice, and Chinese people love that sort of syrupy crap; it doesn't challenge their ideals of femininity. There were other singers who had deeper voices (e.g. Cai Qun) and were just as technically accomplished, but far less popular.

my dad love teresa teng very very much. i'm not really love her when i was small cos it's quite annoying that my dad play it on and on. since i growth up i love her more cos she's a really good singer. she had lots of songs and some of them were not that popular but they're much better than her greatest hits.

Thank you for reviving these images. I hadn't seen or heard this artist in years - not since the late 80's and early 90's (and now I know why). She really was known as "the other Deng".

Your asian expeditions are mostly Japan - it's cool to see you expanding.

Domo ... or in this case, xie xie, ni!

Confusion can only be two things: 1)Stupidity in motion 2)Art

If you love Teresa Teng, what could be better than a movie about love with a background of Teresa Teng? You should definitely check out Comrades, Almost a Love Story (starring Maggie Cheung and Leon Lai). The movie itself is a torch film, about torch love, and about love for torch singers and the emotions torch songs can provoke. I don't want to reveal too much, but there's a scene where Maggie gets her jacket signed by 'Teresa' (the real Teng was already dead), and the film ends with an incredible commentary on homelessness (emotional, not literal) and nostalgia. Highly recommended.

Trane

Oh wow, very posh and with two eyes in "Hairstyle of the Devil," somewhere between David Bowie and Darren Hayman.
What was that video from a similar era with the similarly unblinking singing protagonist who I think might have been Sting?

When I was living in Taiwan I got quite into the China Dolls. Their songs were catchy and their videos were generally entertaining. They sing in a mixture of Mandarin and Thai. I can't find my favourite one on YouTube, but here's one from the album I have:

This one's new to me, but it's a New Year song, like my old favourite, and I like the video:

I also got into The Clippers (http://www.popmatters.com/pm/columns/article/5736/sailing-rough-waters/) whilst in Taiwan, but I can't find any of their stuff on YouTube - a pity. They're very good.

By the way, you may have mentioned this on the blog somewhere before, but have you listened to much soranbushi or Okinawan folk music? The Japanese person who lives in this house was convinced that Corkscrew King comes from the Okinawan folksong Ojisan.

I don't know the specific song Ojisan (my song references the Shimura Ken character Henna Ojisan), but yes, I've heard Okinawan folk music, and yes, the song could well be influenced by it. It's plinky in the same way, and has the same eccentric vocal interjections (courtesy of my then-flatmate Ayako).

When I was teaching at a Japanese language school a while back my pupils told me about soranbushi (soran bushi). I realised I actually had a recording of it, but the impression I was given was of a whole genre. As far as I can make out now, it's a single fishing song, of which there are a number of versions, that has become something of a song-and-dance phenomenon. I found this on YouTube:

I'm not an expert by any means, but I'm very fond of Okinawan folk music. This is one of my favourites. It's really a lovely melody:

the sets, constructed for communist state television shows we can only dream about
Teresa Teng was from Taiwan and was a big supporter of the KMT. She never performed in the Communist PRC.

Oddly enough, "The Moon Represents My Heart" is the one complete song I can sing in Chinese. I once sang it karaoke-style in front of a room of 300 Chinese people at my brother-in-law's wedding.

dear momus

again out of no-where
(sorry for the unproper way of writing here)

this new Winston Tong
http://www.emusic.com/album/10954/10954505.html
on Emusic
is a album for you to hear

love from israel

TROY

I think she is either crying or singing some sad song.
fly-fishing-bargains.com (http://fly-fishing-bargains.com)

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Ballads of massive acceptance

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T.T.

googoogaga

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the other Deng

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Comrades, Almost a Love Story

art yob lately

China Dolls

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Re: China Dolls

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ballads of massive acceptance