Chapter Nineteenth: A Small Love Song

  Is a street singer very powerful? Actually, if it's just an ordinary street singer, there's nothing special about it.

  The woman who got off the subway wasn't someone who hadn't seen the world. In fact, she had been to dozens of cities and countries, where she saw many street performers singing or dancing in various places. Although she took the subway, she was actually one of Japan's highest earners, and her reason for taking the subway was often just to save time and effort, not because she couldn't afford a car.

  In terms of music, her strength and influence are far beyond what a street performer can compare to.

  At first, when the woman stood in the crowd and noticed the singing man, no, looking at his young appearance, it would be more appropriate to call him a boy. When she noticed the boy, she was actually quite disdainful in her heart. She had seen too many talented but unsuccessful singers, and too many singers with beautiful voices who could only become third-rate artists. She had also seen countless types of music in the world. With such an attitude, when she saw the boy's eyes behind his sunglasses, which seemed to be trying to please her, or even a bit provocative, her disdain deepened.

  "Why are you so confident that your song is good? If it's really that great, shouldn't you have become famous already? How could someone with such talent end up busking in the subway?" the woman thought.

  Then the boy began to sing.

  "Huh? Haven't heard of it?" As soon as the music started, the woman felt something was off.

  As a professional, the woman hadn't heard many songs that she didn't know, and according to general rules, street performers should choose popular songs that are easy to sing along to, so as to attract passersby. Choosing completely unknown songs that aren't even her own would not only fail to impress anyone but also... such songs usually aren't of good quality anyway.

  But things are not absolute, singing a song that others have never heard of has another possibility, that is, the person is singing his own song!

  "But looking at him, he's just started to grow a bit of fluff on his upper lip, and he can't be more than 20 years old. If he writes and sings his own songs... the quality and musicality are almost hopeless..." The woman evaluated with a professional mindset.

  As the guitar sounded, the boy sang this song.

  The boy is a boy, the voice sounds very clear and loud, just like the voices of those boys in the campus radio station. With the music, the boy slowly sings a pretty good melody.

  "The melody sounds so flat... But, why do the listeners on the side all gather around for such a straightforward and unchanging music? Looking at their surprised and amazed expressions, it's clear that they're hearing this song for the first time just like me..."

  The girl's comment is not wrong, this song was indeed very narrative in the beginning, just like someone telling a story, at first people will always describe an ordinary and quiet time until the storyteller says "but".

  The woman listening to the song also reacted quickly, and soon thought of similar possibilities: "Nowadays, there are only two possible explanations for this straightforward narrative. One is that the song was originally like this, and the other is...the real ups and downs were placed in the chorus!"

  "Does he have that kind of ability to perfectly transition from a dull rhythm to an intense one?!" the woman couldn't help but wonder.

  It's better to watch and see how it goes before performing.

  Just as the boy struck the last heavy note, the woman saw him take a deep breath.

  "Here!" She almost held her breath at the same time.

  "Look! The most important person for you is right by your side! What I want to convey to you is this love song that's playing!"

  "Listen! Listen! Listen! This resounding love song......!"

  What does this feeling feel like?

  Most people in the world are ordinary and mediocre, even this woman who is absolutely unique and brilliant has compromised on this point. To a certain extent, it can be said that she has long been at peace with this situation. Perhaps there really are unparalleled geniuses in the world, perhaps there really are earth-shaking loves, but the woman has also long acknowledged that it's too difficult to encounter such people or things. It's so difficult that after decades, she has already lost interest in searching for them.

  But just as she had lost hope, at this moment when she was wandering through the world, a chance encounter, a casual glance, made her discover that in the sand beneath her feet, a pearl, not one but a radiant diamond burst forth! What he had been searching for on this land under his feet and couldn't find, appeared before her at a time when he had long lost the desire to search!

  The boy's singing voice, the boy's song!

  All of this is so perfect!

  This song is simply unparalleled!

  The girl naturally didn't know how vicious this song was in the history that the boy had experienced.

  "Little Love Song" is a song from the Mongol 800 band's 2001 album, but this album was not placed on the shelves of any CD store in Japan when it was released.

  The reason is simple. Mongol800 was still an underground band in 2001, and this song and album are also 100% underground!

  Some songs can sell a million copies, but the main reason is not because the song is particularly good. The popularity of the singer and their fame are often the primary reasons why a song can sell a million copies, from Morning Musume to Arashi to AKB48, it's all the same.

  But it's not that a song has to sell one million copies, the singer must have excellent popularity, for example, this song "Small Love" and the album it belongs to are just like that.

  Mongol800 was just an underground band at that time, and it was natural that there were no means of promoting the song when this album was released. In 2001, online marketing was not even a shadow. This song really caught attention in Karaoke.

  Mongol800 was just an underground band, but they had some fame in their main activity area of Okinawa. Their album naturally entered the local karaoke scene, and that's when things started to happen. Fans sang the song at karaoke bars for non-fans, who also fell in love with the song and sang it for more people. The small love song spread through karaoke from Okinawa to Kyushu, Shikoku, and Honshu, driving album sales. When the sales results came out, everyone was shocked by the final numbers.

  2.6 million! An underground album sold 2.6 million copies, such an absolutely frightening achievement!

  At this time, 42 weeks have already passed!

  That's right, the album released in 2001 swept across the entire Japanese entertainment industry by the following year!

  And the sales record of this underground album was still being maintained until 2014!

  This song is absolutely a musical miracle, it has the magic that makes almost everyone obsessed!

  That's why Zhou Xiao can make the entire Gao Yuan Temple subway station applaud for him!

  After the applause, as expected, Zhou Xiao received the most money he had gotten in days! The surrounding audience took out their wallets and threw money into his guitar case, a scene that Zhou Xiao had not encountered at all in the past few days.

  What surprised and delighted him even more was that the woman he had been paying attention to also pulled out her own wallet.

  Zhou Xiao was very happy, no matter how much money others gave him, it was all an unexpected gain to him. Only the woman's money was what Zhou Xiao wanted most, after all, he had made a promise in his heart that "this song is for her".

  And the money this woman took out also shocked him.

  All I saw was the woman lowering her head and rummaging through her purse, first pulling out a few coins, then extracting several banknotes. Then, without hesitation... she tossed the coins back into her purse and put all the banknotes into Zhou Xiao's guitar case!!!

  PS, the name thing is actually not a big deal, as far as I know, to become Japanese now requires a Japanese surname rather than a Japanese name, and there are over 100,000 surnames in Japan...and even if "Zhou" isn't among those 100,000 surnames, I'll still write it this way, just consider it a parallel universe...also, come quickly with your votes!! Come quickly to collect!!