完美的生活 Dinner @ Eight TVB Theme Song - 吳若希 Jinny Ng
Hey everybody!! We've decided to do a review on Come Home Love: Dinner @ Eight's new theme song! This drama is airing as we speak :)
Let's begin our post with the singer choice! Of course it's Jinny... of course. What better way to brainwash viewers than put it on the long-running sitcom that many see-lais are anticipating! We know the Come Home Love name is going to be running for a long time and just wait! Two three years from now... it'll still be Come Home Love. So, no better way to get Jinny's voice ringing in your head! Even if there are better singers (and trust us there are), they just wouldn't land this song. We've always wondered what she's done to get to her status now... seems mysterious since she's been sweeping the Gold Song Awards and such these two years with the backing of Herman Ho, CEO of Voice Ent. Singer choice... what can we even say? What more is there to say at this point?
The song itself: We usually break it up into the melody, lyrics, execution and such. So on with the melody... what melody? What tune?.. We don't here much tbh. Just a bunch of notes strung together.. maybe repeated who knows? But this is not what you call a melody, no wonder it's so hard for people to sing live these days with no solid melody. No points for melody here. Lyrics... meh. We want to say sure it's pretty good but after we heard the song, we realized we remembered zero words and got no meaning out of it. It all sounded like a jumble of words aaandd theennn it's over. Then when Cee did not listen to the song and just read the words, nothing came to mind. It was just a bunch of stuff about yay I'm happy and I got this happy life where it's 8 o'clock at night and after work I can finally be myself and be free and tell my family the good news that I'm done work... wait what? Yeah, that's what we thought too when she said 可放心報喜. um what? Is it just us or is this really random and doesn't even fit here, maybe we're taking it too seriously for example, we thought of this: When a guy goes off to war and good news comes home that he's alive, the family will be happy. Or like a police officer reporting back home that he/she is safe. Okay fine... then any worker coming home saying they didn't get into a car accident and stuff (but still that's far fetched Voice Ent lyricists). There are so many other lyrics and phrases that are weird. We just don't have an appreciation for them anymore, but in all honesty... songs are poems and they should illustrate something to the listener. We're not getting that here!
Now now! With all that said, EXECUTION IS OUR WORST ENEMY HERE! Let's not be too critical blah blah blah. We have heard that a lot but when the singer does not SOUND like the singer... we have a problem. We saw this when it came out with just a couple hundred views... now it's reached around 15000 and boy the comments are quite aligned with our thoughts! People are calling this a kindergarten song and some say it better be for the kids program and such. And that is exactly our problem. However, we will back this up with our thoughts. First of all, she really does sound like a kid here, maybe not a kid but the pitch of her voice is very high and sounds straining on her voice.. unless it was edited to be like this which may be a valid possibility (no joke). In her old songs, she already sounds like she's straining her voice to reach the high notes and sometimes, all you can hear is her throat and breathing to get to the high note. We are worried for her, very sincerely actually. We want to see her succeed through her vocal capability and not from her brainwashing auto-tuned songs. We know from her live performances that she is a bit tone deaf, but we did believe that she would go through more training and give us better performances but quite frankly, she's not improving. This is just a selling of her cute image and tbh... we don't know why. Everytime we see her, she looks very different. Just a few examples:
http://chinesemov.com/images/actors2/Jinny-Ng-1.jpg
We know this is photoshopped above BTW.
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http://i.imgur.com/JlmDNdG.jpg
https://cdn1.lockerdome.com/uploads/8a17cc644e58ccbdaaeccac0bbdccf939ffa8d1d24cb9920f39cb536f2347ac4_large
She looks NOTHING LIKE THE OTHER PICS.
http://www.nautiljon.com/images/people/00/32/jinny_ng_34823.jpg?0
Who is this?
http://www.mehah.com/site/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/field/image/jinny_0.jpg?
itok=mz7eInsv
Very old pic we think.
But you get the point. so now not only does she look different all the time... she even sounds different. Way to add to the package! Besides the pitch of her voice here, we feel that this song is trying too hard to convey the cute side of her. Not only that, we aren't feeling the warmth of a family and the warmth of having a perfect life from her voice. Oh and we can't really her anything she's saying, it's kinda slurred. Especially the very first line. We had no idea she sung 八點鐘. That's a problem since it's what the sitcom is about and it's the first thing the audience hears. We remember in Joyce's song for CHL, we really did feel at home and it was quite sentimental and to this day, we remember BOTH the tune and the lyrics. Now it's not fair since we have heard her song for way longer but we literally just listened to Jinny's and we don't remember a thing (again). Fred's song for CHL2 was very bold and he sold his charisma very well in that song, it was warming and very easy to listen to. Again, we remember the guitar and the great arrangement of all the instruments. Here, we have already forgotten what instruments were in the song, let us relisten. Okay, got it, piano and drums (or just percussion.. we don't know if those are drums or claps lol oops). This is one of the worst theme songs ever, sorry!
完美的生活 Dinner @ Eight TVB Theme Song - 吳若希 Jinny Ng
完美的生活
曲:張家誠
詞:張美賢
編:張家誠
監:何哲圖/韋景雲
八點鐘 吹起晚風 心底有正能量全力發動
你共我 整天奔波告終
身與心 頃刻放鬆 讓熱情像頻率連繫接通
舉止變得從容 疲勞雙肩終於不超重
回到這裡 滿載平凡的小趣味
和暖語氣 笑意亦甜美 愉快事共說起
抬頭天際可遠飛 可以做回自己
可放心報喜 家裡總有熱暖好天氣
微小心意再儲起
繁忙仿似一世紀 又重拾回自己
總看到轉機 共行路程萬里 這感覺完美
圍著我自然自由幸福 充滿了空氣
八點鐘 吹起晚風 大廈林立還是沉著發夢
美夢裡 已經飄出太空
身與心 頃刻放鬆 讓敵人暫時亦停下進攻
心聲也許相同 人人都想歸家不冰凍
回到這裡 滿載平凡的小趣味
和暖語氣 笑意亦甜美 愉快事共說起
抬頭天際可遠飛 可以做回自己
可放心報喜 家裡總有熱暖好天氣
微小心意再儲起
繁忙仿似一世紀 又重拾回自己
總看到轉機 共行路程萬里 這感覺完美
圍著我自然自由幸福 充滿了空氣
抬頭天際可遠飛 可以做回自己
可放心報喜 家裡總有熱暖好天氣
微小心意再儲起
繁忙仿似一世紀 又重拾回自己
總看到轉機 共行路程萬里 這感覺完美
圍著我自然自由幸福 充滿了空氣
- CeeJay
I totally agree that this sounded like a kids' song! Even though the lack of melody and meaningful lyrics is already flushing away hope for this song, I actually would have liked to see Kayee Tam try this one out. I'm surprised the Voice Ent doesn't ever (like EVER) use singers other than their 四寶. (i.e. the end of April will be filled with Hubert Wu singing themes) Based on her YouTube covers and performances on screen, I'm quite confident that Kayee could bring out more of the warmth and less of the cuteness that this song was supposed to portray.
ReplyDeleteJinny speaks with quite a bit of slang actually, and this isn't the first song that I've heard of hers with such a slur of lyrics, but this really is one of her worst. Especially with the "自然自由" part in the chorus, I had to keep replaying that to make out what she was singing. I too am surprised that she has shot to fame and has so many fans if she really doesn't have good pronunciation and tonality that are must-haves for a singer.
Here goes more criticism, lol....
ReplyDeleteHonestly, this song is typical TVB/Voice Entertainment garbage. I actually didn't even want to listen to the song because the mere mention of Jinny Ng singing it already turned me off, but for the purposes of commenting, I decided to listen to part of it at least…well, I lasted 20 seconds and couldn’t bear it anymore (if I have to listen to any more of this song, I think I’m going to jump out the window, lol). Jinny can’t sing to save her life, yet of course TVB is pushing her into audiences’ faces 24/7….argh! To be honest, I’m sick and tired of listening to all those Voice Entertainment singers – even the ones I like, such as Hubert and Fred for instance, are starting to get on my nerves.
As for the ‘memorable’ factor to TVB’s theme songs -- well, unfortunately TVB’s theme songs stopped being ‘memorable’ decades ago. The worst move TVB ever made was taking the production of their theme songs in-house back in the early/mid 2000s and switching to have mostly their own artists sing theme songs rather than established professional singers (with a few exceptions of course). I’m not sure how many people noticed, but after they made the switch, many of TVB’s theme songs started sounding the same, which of course reduces the memorability factor. I honestly can’t remember too many of the theme songs from the past 15 years and what series they belong to – yet interestingly enough, I AM able to remember most of the theme songs from 20 to 30 years ago along with their respective series, to the point that when I listen to those songs now, certain scenes from the series actually come to mind too.
It’s a shame that they chose such a horrible theme song for the series (by the way, the series itself is pretty good so far – not surprising though, since the series has such great actors in Teresa, Wayne, and Power!). Since I’m planning on continuing with the series (finally, something to watch from TVB!), I dread the thought of having to listen to the theme song again…I’ll probably have to just put the opening theme on mute and put the volume back up once the series itself actually comes on…
@ Anonymous Wow! That is something that we did not think of but we totally agree with you about Kayee Tam. We were too focused on critiquing her song we forgot about other singers. That is so true, actually we both really liked Hoffman Cheng but for some reason... he had like two theme songs ONLY and then now he's no longer with Voice Ent but still with TVB. The Voice Ent. knows nothing about promotion strategies. Hoffman had a very solid, powerful voice. And also, what about Auston Lam who wrote and sang a bunch of CHL sub themes? His duet with Kayee on her channel was great and he has a very simple, raw yet sincere style. If we can't get Joyce back, at least use Auston and Kayee! Actually when we read your comment, we tried to think of what she said for and for some reason when we try to sing it with the tune... we keep saying 自然自然 instead. That just proves this is bad. When the audience has issues listening, reading and literally regurgitating something they've heard five seconds ago.. Definitely needs to work on her enunciation, tone, pitch, (not to mention she's tune deaf live). Especially for Cantonese, a language that really depends on tone and enunciation, a twitch off could have you saying something you might be sorry for haha. :)
ReplyDelete@ llwy12 Hello again! Lol, seems like the criticism won't stop at any rate with anything TVB related these days and that is quite sad to see. Well, on our part thanks for being so involved and dedicated and going through that 20 seconds :) But we are sorry for you that you had to hear that. Sometimes, we just find it insulting that The Voice Ent. is able to put this stuff out and expect positive comments from legitimate people who have legitimate standards... We get what you're feeling with Hubert Wu especially. Actually, we feel quite betrayed as well haha. This might be long but we have to vent to someone haha. So, basically, when Hubert's album came up, we were semi excited to hear NEW songs created for Hubert. After reading the list of songs, we were pleasantly surprised that we only knew FOUR of the songs on the list. Little did we know... TWO OTHER SONGS APPARENTLY WERE FROM OTHER FEMALE SINGERS. We knew 明知故犯 was and were like, whatever, why does he always sing girl songs? THEN WE FOUND OUT 心淡 was from Joey Yung and we were so much more let down.. UNTIL FINALLY, while searching up for Cass Phang songs, WE FOUND OUT 如夢初醒 WAS HERS ORIGINALLY OMG. We lost it right there. AND READING OUR OLD ALBUM REVIEW POST, we actually said it had a 90's feel and his voice is higher than normal.. awks, WE WERE RIGHT. IT'S OLD AND FROM A FEMALE. Well, maybe sorry on our part that we missed out on the Cass Phang/Joey Golden Years but when we already know now, 6 of the songs, and another one is a theme for Last Imperial Physician... there's only like 3 left. AND one of them HAS to be mandarin so, there goes a good canto song. The remaining two were very sloppily put together. Hubert's 讓我放開 is the better one but still. This was a JOKE. This is a JOKE to the dedicated fans of Hubert. Do we now blindly follow this singer who only resings songs from a bygone Cantopop era? Or do we snap out of it and realize that this record company isn't doing it's singers any justice? Sorry for the rant but we just got started and could not stop.
ReplyDeleteThat's true about the memorable factor! We did not watch the dramas from 20-30 years ago but we do listen to the songs. To this day, even though we know nothing about the drama, we wholeheartedly agree that they were memorable. It was like people were more dedicated to their craft (song-writing) back in the day because they weren't under TVB and they didn't have to churn out songs every couple weeks when new dramas aired. Nowadays, the creativity is at a good zero. The lyrics are getting worse and worse. The promotion of the proper singers is just nowhere to be seen. With no management from anything, we agree that you should mute the minute and a half that this song will be played before the show. Good to hear that the sitcom itself is good at least!
I agree with @llwy12, the only songs I seem to remember are those sung by more experienced, professional singers. ex: Joey's OC1 theme, Eason's TITS theme, Chilam's ROTC theme. It's a shame that TVB won't find other singers to sing their themesongs, but at the same time, I think it's partially because the HK music industry is declining in almost all aspects. The veterans with amazing vocal abilities are all slowly retiring but there's no one really to "take their spot" so we're kinda left with crappy compositions passed out to singers like it's their homework.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, even though Hubert's going to be singing what, 3 theme/sub themes back to back/simultaneously, I have heard from artistes and the producer that the theme for Daddy Dearest is a really touching song. And guess what, IT'S ORIGINAL. Even though I am getting tired of hearing the same singers, if they're good songs, I don't mind. I am a huge fan of Hubert and I agree that his last CD was a HUGE let down, but let's hope this Daddy Dearest theme is able to propel him to the spotlights again, this time for an original work!
Btw, I keep hearing in his interviews that Herman was the one who said he should keep re-singing old songs, like what? Maybe I don't understand because I'm not an artiste, but to me and other fans, it looks like Herman is biased almost against him while he loves Jinny, Fred, and Alfred??
@Anonymous: Regarding the reason why TVB won’t find other singers to sing their songs – yes, part of it is the reason you stated about the decline of the HK music industry overall, but that applies more to current time….back when they made the switch in the early/mid 2000s, that was mainly because TVB was being cheap – they took the music production in-house so they wouldn’t have to pay the higher rates that the ‘professional’ singers (and composers, lyricists, songwriters, etc.) most likely charged. That was also around the time that Sir Run Run Shaw’s wife Mona Fong started taking over in terms of overseeing general operations (though on paper, Uncle Six was technically still in charge) and also around the time that some of the ‘problem’ management were brought on board (i.e. Virginia Lok, Stephen Chan, later to be joined by Mark Lee, Sandy Yu, etc.) – unfortunately, that’s also the time that things started going downhill in terms of productions. Oh, that was also around the time that their new studio (the one that they currently use now) in Tseung Kwan O was completed and with all the money they spent to build the darn thing, makes sense that they would want to utilize the studio as much as possible -- which is partially why they put a stop to most of the on-location filming that they used to do (which is why many of their series started to look the same as well, since everything was being filmed inside the same studio).
DeleteAnyway, back to the music piece…to be honest, I’ve actually been ‘complaining’ for at least a decade already that TVB should never have gotten themselves so involved in the music side of things. I mean, yes, they do need to have some behind-the-scenes music people to be in charge of choreographing music for their series, but those people shouldn’t be the ones writing like 90% of their theme songs. Sure, that concept worked back when composer Joseph Koo and lyricist James Wong were active in the industry and were able to produce hundreds of great theme songs for TVB, but honestly, the 2 of them were legends in their own rights and no one can compare to the massive amount of talent both of them had. TVB should’ve just stuck with producing television programs rather than trying to be ‘jack of all trades but master of none’.
And don’t get me started on Herman Ho – that dude doesn’t know crap about music production, as he was never really directly involved in the production of music in the close to 30 years he has been ‘active’ in the industry. Sure, he worked for various record companies as well as radio/TV stations in the past, but mostly in the departments responsible for publicity and marketing of artists and then later on went from one executive level position to another – typical CEO who calls all the shots and orders people around but doesn’t know a thing about what is involved in making quality music. If what you said is true and Herman is the one ‘advising’ Hubert on what types of songs to sing – well, let’s just say I feel sorry for Hubert and he should get the hell out of that record company because his career won’t go anywhere!
Sorry for this late reply! @llwy - It's been extremely evident that TVB wants to use its new facility to the max. Like, even for the Eye in the Sky MV, they filmed scenes in the corridors and such. The TVB building is not only a hospital, but also police headquarters. Its roof is used for many suicide scenes and such. The cafeteria is not only a canteen for the hospital, but also a canteen for universities. What a way to use one building! On the brighter side, Blue Veins is showing a lot of different areas in HK so far. It's a little bit different and not your typical TVB drama. In terms of filming locations in HK, it deserves some credit but storyline has been very mediocre.
ReplyDeleteFor anyone in Voice Entertainment, or even the HK music scene in general, the road doesn't look too bright. It's a very small industry lacking in organization to properly write and record songs and also film MV's. A lot of these MV's are terrible, not only coming from Voice Ent. but in general, these directors don't know what they're doing. An example would be the newest duet from Alex Fong and Stephy Tang. That MV was just them circling their car for 5 minutes and they somehow couldn't see each other on the other side of the broken, flipped car for 5 MINUTES. Like... ok.
Better to have no theme songs that have one that's hated by the audience. This Dinner @ Eight theme song is getting a lot of criticism and the dislikes are more than the likes now! A first for the Voice Ent. TVB instead should really focus on their storylines, they seem to be lacking a lot these days. It's either all over the place or nothing is happening, sometimes nothing even makes sense. In our opinion, the dramas must be well-written, who cares about the song if the drama sucks? Look to others in the music industry to write a song or two for dramas because how we see it, TVB is only allied with a couple of companies and the rest are like boycotted or something.
I have to disagree with you I think the song has a nice ring to it and Jinny does a good job with this theme song. The chorus might intentionally be a tongue twister. The song suits the Come Home Love Dinner at 8 intro scenes.
ReplyDeleteThe Dinner @ 8 series I agree with you is pretty good with a strong veteran cast and the new comers are also good. The characters and their interaction with each other is interesting.The newbies in this new series are better than those from CHL2. This current series is way better than CHL2. I hope CHL:Dinner @ 8 continues on for more episodes.
Yes HK music tapered off in the late 90s, early 2000. Even English music starting to taper off recently.