Jessie J wins 歌手2018, Western Media Can’t Quite Wrap Their Heads Around It

[陳德聰]

So not that I was watching every episode, but I was definitely interested in whether the producers would allow Jessie J to win or not. I was actually quite surprised that she won. Watching back, it is true that her performances often were more polished and genuinely “good,” but she also got to perform her own songs multiple times when I thought the point is to force established singers to branch out and experiment with other genres and songs.

What is wholly unsurprising though, is that when you google “Jessie J wins,” all of the headlines of articles in the UK are things like “Jessie J wins China’s version of X Factor” and “Jessie J wins Chinese TV Talent Show.” Some of the articles bother to mention that the show is comprised of professional singers, but I think they still betray a deeper misunderstanding with comparisons to X Factor or calling it a ‘Talent Show’. It’s more like an entire season’s worth of a direct platform for self-promotion for all of the “contestants”.

 

I’m just curious though, because I just skimmed through the finale episode and I felt that almost all of the other contestants’ performances were objectively bad—I even generally enjoy Chinese pop music, so that wasn’t it—do people also think that these shows where winning is essentially meaningless (‘cause they’re all extremely wealthy famous musicians) are also rigged like 中國好聲音 etc.?

[ChTTay]

Completely agree that it’s been put across in English language media in a misleading way. Exactly like you said, as if she’s entered a talent show for any man and his dog. Kind of takes some of the “shine” off it.

 

I can totally understand why she did it. The BBC article about the win ended by saying that her most recent album launch “failed”.   I’m not really sure what that means but it doesn’t sound good. However, if she can “break” China, she’s got millions of fans waiting for her. Maybe learn a bit of Chinese too. It’ll be a China wide tour next! 

[陳德聰]

She was already at the top of most of the “popular english songs” lists at my local karaoke joints, so I feel like she must have had Chinese fans before this. It certainly can’t hurt winning the show, though. I think she was quite smart not to attempt Chinese songs though at this stage hah.

[imron]

5 hours ago, 陳德聰 said:

She was already at the top of most of the “popular english songs” lists at my local karaoke joints

And there was me thinking "Who is Jessie J?".

[Tomsima]

So I watched every episode this series…

And I too was really surprised Jessie j was allowed to win. I was 100% convinced 汪峰 was the designated winner right from the very first episode, so when he came on and sung 我愛你中國 and all the minority reps and little kids came out to doing I thought it was a sure thing. But it wasn't, Jessie won. That being said, a UK government rep made multiple speeches throughout the series about how proud she was that Jessie was representing the UK and being an ambassador for UK-China relations. This was particularly prominent during Theresa Mays visit.