When "Wing" received invitations from various TV stations again, Ji Yan couldn't help but sigh at how quickly the year had passed. He felt like he hadn't done anything worthwhile, and time seemed to have vanished in an instant.
But he felt that he was living a fulfilling life, and had the feeling that he could continue to slack off for another 100 days.
"Teacher Ji, you need to be more diligent!"
"Teacher Ji, rise up! Rise up!"
Lu Wei and Fang Yu were making sarcastic remarks on the side, and Ji Yan rushed over with a roar, hooking his arms around their necks: "You guys got more rest than me this year, right?"
While struggling, Fang Yu gestured to Xie Mingxuan to take a picture: "Old Xie, I'm going to expose this person's ugly behavior!"
Xie Mingxuan raised his phone and took a picture.
The next second, Fang Yu posted the photo on Weibo and tagged Ji Yan: "Li Yu, who are you planning to target this time?"
"How could the world be so cruel! Teacher Ji, have you finally decided to turn your back on your teammates too?"
"Witnessing Teacher Ji's cruelty to his teammates @Xie Mingxuan, Captain, what are you doing?"
"The captain is taking pictures lol, thanks to the lovable bastards of the Wings Group."
The members of Wings are maturing day by day, and their fans from back then have grown from students to working adults. Their enthusiasm for idol worship isn't as fiery as it was in their student days, but they still buy Wings albums and concert tickets. Every year, new stars emerge in the entertainment industry, and Wings' popularity seems to have waned. However, in reality, Wings has become increasingly mature, and their fans are becoming more and more devoted.
This can be seen from the ticket sales of just one of Wings' tours.
"Wings" manages to attract enough sponsors for each of their concerts, even though the concerts themselves don't need that much sponsorship. Brands and companies from the host city still want to partner with "Wings" and even want to be the title sponsor of the concerts.
The number of times "Wings" trends on social media is still quite high, but the members are becoming more and more low-key, and the fans are also tacitly refraining from disturbing them. As long as there are albums to buy and concerts to attend, that's enough for them.
The vast majority of fans are career-oriented fans—even if young fans initially defend any mistake their idol makes, as time goes on and new idols emerge, some fans will switch to new idols, while those who are no longer impulsive will quietly follow their favorite idols and watch their careers develop step by step.
"Wings" has become a retirement option for some fans.
...
At the end of this year, "Wing" received invitations from more than 10 TV stations and online platforms. They have witnessed the development history of New Year's Eve concerts. At first, only a few TV stations participated, but gradually, more and more platforms held New Year's Eve concerts, and the prices for New Year's Eve concerts became more and more outrageous.
Snow Mountain TV quoted Yi 1.2 million for two songs this year, which is an astronomical price.
Of course, if "Yi" is willing to participate in a variety show on Snow Mountain TV, the price can be further negotiated.
In recent years, variety shows of all kinds have become more and more abundant, and the price for celebrities to participate in variety shows has also increased. Perhaps because money can move people's hearts, those big stars that netizens thought were hard to invite have appeared on the set of various variety shows. On the contrary, "Yi" is as usual. The last time he participated in a variety show was during the broadcast of "Super Idol", mainly to repay the favor of "Idol Generation".
Fans counted on their fingers, and it felt like Super Idol was something from the last century. The boy groups that debuted on Super Idol have all disbanded for who knows how long.
In the variety show market, "Yi" is definitely the type that is expensive but unavailable. The asking price is top-tier, and the number of zeros following it is eye-catching. But the only problem is that they can't be invited.
Snow Mountain TV is already a platform with a very good relationship with "Wings", but "Wings" can only participate in New Year's Eve concerts at most. As for variety shows, it is still very difficult to invite them.
But that's true for currently popular stars. Actors have roles to play, and singers have concerts to perform. It's rare for a popular star to spend all their time on variety shows.
This year was a rare year-end for "Wings" as the group accepted invitations from Snow Mountain TV and Night Festival to perform live. The organizers of Huayi Awards and Star Film Awards also extended invitations to "Wings," but since none of their songs were nominated for either award this year, they had to decline.
DW Entertainment announced "Wings'" schedule for the end of the year early on, but Snow Mountain TV and Night Music Awards acted even faster. Shortly after finalizing their contracts with "Wings", both platforms announced the news on their respective official Weibo accounts.
"Snow Mountain TV is really in a hurry lol~"
"Wings had a tour last year, so they didn't go to the New Year's Eve concert. Did they go the year before?"
"Those who have seen the concert say that Wings' live performance is absolutely explosive; you'll definitely regret it if you don't see it!"
"Looking forward to it! Judging from the eagerness of Snow Mountain TV, you can tell how excited they are about the Wings Group joining the show. After all, Snow Mountain TV doesn't have any big names this year."
The influx of capital has caused traditional satellite TV stations to gradually fall behind in the competition. Moreover, among all the satellite TV stations, Snow Mountain TV was not the most financially powerful to begin with. In terms of financial strength, it simply cannot compete with other satellite TV stations. Snow Mountain TV's offer for "Wing" was negotiated through gritted teeth, because they also had information from other satellite TV stations. It is said that the two powerful satellite TV stations offered "Wing" a price starting with 2.
The reason "Wing" accepted their invitation was entirely due to the good relationship established through previous cooperation.
However, before the New Year's Eve concert began, Ji Yan officially joined the filming of the sports movie "Run Out of the Sky". After the filming started, he used his rest days to participate in the New Year's Eve concert of Snow Mountain TV, and the same was true for the Night Gala.
Fans had expected that "Wings" would sing hit songs from their previous four albums or compilation albums at the New Year's Eve concert, but to their surprise, "Wings" sang all new songs at this year's New Year's Eve concert.
One song is "Happy New Year," and the other is called "I Want to Get a Cat, But My Agent Doesn't Agree."
Fans were eagerly anticipating the familiar melody, but when the accompaniment started, the first song was festive and warm, and the members were all dressed in red.
"So cool! So cool! So cool!!"
"It sounds great!!"
For fans who missed the tour, they had been looking forward to Wings' live performance for a long time, and the song "Happy New Year" really showed them a completely transformed Wings. The members' original qualities were retained or even enhanced, but the sincerity contained in the music remained unchanged.
"Old Xie's bass voice, it's amazing!"
"Viagra's voice is becoming more and more distinctive, it sounds amazing!"
Fans had nothing to say except "awesome." They only knew that "Wing's" songs were great. As for the techniques used in the songs or what genre they belonged to, that was something music critics needed to consider.
And the second song—
"What the hell?! Hahahaha!"
"The song title is already unbeatable, what exactly did Sister Ying do?"
"Hilarious! If I weren't used to seeing the Wings Group's daily routines, I would really think Sister Ying was some kind of demon king!"
"Sister Ying: I'm being blamed every single day."
"Hilarious! I remember that the Wings Group can't keep cats. It's clearly because Teacher Ji is so disliked by the cats, okay? It's not that the manager disagrees, it's that the manager is taking care of the cats for you guys!"
"I saw that well-fed and chubby cat on my assistant's Weibo a few days ago. Don't pretend it doesn't exist. It's clearly you guys who are fickle and tired of it."
After listening to this song with its ridiculously long title, fans have to admit that, apart from the somewhat cheeky title, the song quality is still at the high level of "Wings" and is definitely worthy of being included in a formal album.
From this perspective, "Wing" is indeed a bit willful.
Although the group hasn't released any new albums since "Mountains and Seas," they've consistently released new songs. This is probably the capricious nature of singer-songwriters. Moreover, the "Wings" group isn't just a one-person composer; all four members can write.
—But it's not just about being able to write songs. Just look at the two songs they performed at their New Year's Eve concert, "Happy New Year" and "Raising Cats." If they were from other artists' albums, they would definitely be the title tracks.
Over the past few years, Yi has not only improved his singing skills but also his songwriting abilities. Currently, many singers in the music industry have approached Yi to write songs, and some popular variety shows and TV dramas have also asked Yi to compose theme songs. When Yi and his friends are unavailable, the other party will purchase the copyright of old songs.
With the rise of "Wings", more and more young singers are willing to pursue the path of songwriting. The success of "Wings" in terms of sales is also an encouragement to the current sluggish music scene. When the music scene was at its lowest point, some musicians even shouted the slogan "The music scene is dead". Of course, "Blue" is the only outlier among them.
But there's only one "blue" option.
Fans also thought there was only one "blue".
But Yi has grown up slowly, and now Yi is at the peak of her singing career. Almost every song she produces is a masterpiece, and she has a large number of fans. It is no exaggeration to say that you can hear Yi's works almost everywhere now.
With two songs performed by "Wings", Snow Mountain TV's New Year's Eve concert this year outperformed its competitors, leading by a wide margin in ratings and trending topics. The live versions of "Happy New Year" and "Raising Cats" were also posted on Weibo, receiving countless reposts. In particular, after "Wings" posted the live version of "Raising Cats" on their official Weibo account, fans took action and shared photos of their own cats' adorable faces.
At first, the topics were "show off your cat" and "look how cute this cat is". Gradually, the topics evolved into "What, all the fans of Wings Group have cats?" In the end, the ultimate advanced version was "As long as you are a fan of Wings Group, Wings Group will send you a cat".
And so, a large number of netizens contacted "Yi" and his group, asking them to send them cats.
Ji Yan: "???"
He doesn't even have one!
What's wrong with this group of people? Something's really off!
He was so envious of all those cat pictures, okay?
Ji Yan couldn't help but imagine a scene where a group of cats sat in a row, waiting to be sent by him.
Ah, it's so nice to dream.
“Teacher Ji, wake up.” Fang Yu glanced at him. “I think maybe it’s because you send those pornographic panda emojis every day that the cat doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“No, the Porn Panda has now evolved into the Bomb Throwing Panda,” Lu Wei added.
"Bloodline suppression?"
Ji Yan: "Old Xie, please don't follow their example."
The situation at the Night Gala was similar to that of the Snow Mountain TV New Year's Eve concert. The appearance of "Wing" caused a sensation. While watching the live broadcast, fans hoped that "Blue" and "Wing" would collaborate on stage again. However, the fans only thought about it and did not expect such a thing to happen.
"Happy New Year" and "Raising a Cat" became the two most popular songs before the Spring Festival. The former was used for New Year's greetings, while the latter—netizens have wildly modified the song, changing it into multiple versions such as "I want to raise a cat, but my mom/my dad/another cat/dog/the mice in the house don't agree," and its popularity is clearly surpassing that of "Happy New Year."
This was something that "Wing" and the others hadn't expected.
This song was originally written for Ye Ying. After that, every time Ye Ying came to visit them, they would turn the song up to the maximum volume and play it on repeat.
Ye Ying: "..."
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
