“It’s hot in here, it must be Summer“

Gladly, AA is not that hot during summer months. A day could be pleasantly spent with cool breezes and not-so-strong sunshine, although some flies and mosquitos could be a bit annoying.

It’s been more than a month since last time. Things went quite okay, and I am trying to embrace this brand new summer.

Music and Society, Episode 2

I chose a not so radical topic for the first article, as genuinely, and ideally, we actually do not need that much outcry.

Sometime during high school, I was imagining what songs should be chosen if the topics are four seasons. “他夏了夏天” by SodaGreen is a special one for summer.

I love QingFeng‘s voice since long time ago. The most impressive one was his cover of “我只在乎你”. For a young school kid, I could not feel any of what Teresa Teng did to men of older generations, but I could totally relate with Wu. He has one of the cleanest voices, and he expressed the emotions with some ‘vulnerable strength’, with a bit of naivety. Interestingly, I do not like Zhou Shen, although I am not sure if they should be comparable.

I generally appreciate singers showing characteristics which are traditionally labeled with the opposite gender, and it’s actually quite common. Vulnerability, anger, sassiness and confidence. Some mixture of those certainly make things fun.

Back to topic.

I only realized the sense of social responsibility of SodaGreen when I was in college. I was going through their Winter songs on Youtube during those sleepless nights on Via Lisbona. For a long time I would say their work expressed exactly that ‘lightness’ of the so-called ‘Petite bourgeoisie’, with those closeness to the nature and some weird imaginations, but that day I came to know for the first time of their songs with caring for the society. Their love and respect for minorities, their recognizing culture and art…

For this song, I took the liberty to modified a bit into English. On a road trip one day in October, while me and J singing it together, I believed that it is the best song, better than any “red” songs, to be used by the state machine to celebrate the working class. With a simple narrative of a normal workday, it contains the challenges and tiredness of the work, but expressed in an optimistic and upbeat tones, which probably coincide with what we were told to work hard happily even though the overall situation may be bad…

“In the sweet burden, he finds his greatest solace.”