Chapter 99: "The Rivalries and Entanglements Among the Best Male Singers!"

On August 10, the new songs by Star and Zhouran and Chen Wenhua were set to be released, a day that drew the gaze of countless netizens. Long before the hour arrived, they were already waiting on music platforms for the two men to unveil their latest work.

This showdown had attracted enormous attention, and its outcome would affect many people. Major media outlets also rushed to arm the battle with one irresistible headline after another:

The clash of old and new!

A feud between two best male singers?

What drove these two top voices, past and present, into such fierce rivalry?

Who will have the last laugh, Zhouran or Chen Wenhua?

Can Zhouran remain firmly seated in the number one spot?

Is Zhouran truly a master of his craft, or merely a paper tiger? Today’s battle will tell.

At last, Zhouran’s music video had been finished in time, after a frantic race against the clock before the song’s release. If it had been delayed any longer, it would have missed the launch altogether. The shoot had been pressed for time, and finding a director had not been easy. Fortunately, with help from the Huayu company, they managed to locate a fairly renowned music video director in the industry just in time.

That was the advantage of being backed by a major company: everything could be handled with relative ease, rather than having to search in silence and on one’s own. If Zhouran had been left to find someone himself, he could certainly have done it, but it would have cost far more trouble, time, and money.

To be honest, Zhouran did not feel especially confident about this contest of songs. The schedule had been far too rushed. If he had been given a little more time, he believed he could have done even better.

Still, as the release time drew near, he did not grow overly anxious. The song was already complete, and there was no time left to revise it anyway. Better to leave it to fate. He had already done everything he could, and done it as well as possible.

Truthfully, under these circumstances, the song that suited him best was indeed this one. And when he thought about it, he did not believe he was necessarily doomed to lose. Now that the music video gave the track an extra boost, and after watching the finished result himself, he had to admit he was quite satisfied.

As daylight faded, time quietly slipped away. Before long, it was noon, the appointed hour for Zhouran and Chen Wenhua’s new song releases. This time, both had chosen a simultaneous nationwide launch, a method increasingly being adopted by top stars, since it allowed a wider audience to hear the songs at once.

Of course, this approach had one drawback: promotional traffic would inevitably be somewhat diluted. But for top-tier celebrities, that was hardly a serious issue.

After all, they already carried a certain level of traffic with them, so promotion was no great difficulty. Beginning with Zhouran, quite a few first-rank singers also started releasing their songs in this all-network format.

When Zhouran released his new song, he even added a line on Weibo saying that the song and its companion piece worked best when taken together. He feared that some people might overlook the music video, since he knew there were listeners who disliked watching them. He wanted to make a special reminder, because this song was meant to be experienced together with the visual presentation.

Chen Wenhua’s new song this time was called Return, and its style was actually very similar to Zhouran’s: both were rousing songs meant to inspire positivity in the audience.

In fact, Chen Wenhua had made a very appropriate choice. For this kind of song, one competing for the charts, the style had to be one that could resonate with listeners, and one that would appeal to a broader audience.

Inside a private villa, Chen Wenhua was in a room with several friends, waiting for his new song to be released. To be honest, he too was quite nervous this time.

Just like Zhouran, he had no great certainty of victory. Chen Wenhua was best known for singing more lyrical pieces, so choosing Return for this chart battle represented a major breakthrough for him.

Return tells the story of someone who, after enduring the hardships of life, still refuses to give up. Its core is perseverance, and when Chen Wenhua sang it, he himself felt a deep resonance.

In truth, given his current achievements, he could have retired from singing entirely. He had already made his name and secured financial freedom; there was no need at all for him to remain on the stage.

And yet, though Chen Wenhua understood this perfectly well, he still was unwilling to give up singing. He knew what he loved. Singing had become part of his life. It was fair to say that he remained in this world simply because he loved to sing. This time, however, he had no choice. He was forced into it.

After releasing his new song, the first thing Chen Wenhua did was not to open his own track, but to play Zhouran’s song for a listen, because he knew full well what quality his own work had.

In fact, before releasing a new song, every singer has some sense of its quality in their heart. So long as no unexpected incident occurs, one can usually predict roughly what kind of result the new song will achieve.

Sudden upsets and dark horses are praised precisely because they are so rare in real life. In truth, there are not nearly as many dramatic surprises as people imagine; such things are low-probability events.

The moment Zhouran’s new song went live, Chen Wenhua immediately chose to listen to it so he could assess its quality. He had originally expected the song to stutter or lag when opened, but to his surprise, it played extremely smoothly.

This was largely thanks to the programmers at the major music platforms. After learning a painful lesson from the release of Zhouran’s last album, they directly deployed their strongest servers to handle the traffic from his new song. Otherwise, they could hardly have guaranteed that the platform would not collapse again. A crash would have been bad enough, but if it did happen, the losses would be severe.

Chen Wenhua had originally planned to simply listen to the song, since he was also one of those who did not care much for music videos. But while browsing Weibo and seeing Zhouran’s message that the song would sound even better when paired with the MV, he rarely chose to open the music video as well.

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Chapter 99: The feud between the best male singers! Free reading.