1
Want to be an artist?
Yes, very much. When I was in the eighth grade, I wanted to be an artist. How nice it is to be an artist. I don’t have to go to school or work.
But how can you be an artist?
Going to Korea to be an apprentice? That costs a lot of money. Make your debut? It’s also lonely. As a group of a group, many artists are in the form of a group debut. With whom?
Abby remembers the only four friends she had in high school.
Five girl group members get together, what’s the group’s name? Young and pretty? Too common. Amethyst of dreams? Abby has a piece of amethyst in her head. Or is it Sunshine? In eighth grade English class, Abby wanted to use this word for a combination name: “Young,” “young.” Ok, that’s it.
What about the names of the members? Artists have to have a stage name. For three days, each person had to think of an English name for himself.
When the day came, no one remembered. Abby has decided to lead by example. Any requests? Yes, looking for one with fewer letters to remember, the group chose five names according to the English letter “ABCD” : Abby, Candy, Cheryl, Dora, and Nancy. Later, when taking the photo, the cameraman teacher typed the name wrong and Candy called Cindy. It doesn’t matter, so let’s call Cindy.
Sunshine was founded at this point, five junior high school girls officially debut. Sunshine is the second girl band group in the history of the town, the founder of the first group is Abby high school deskmate, deskmate had told Abby all the details of his band, but the whole preparation process of Sunshine, Abby never mentioned to her.
What about after your debut? First we have to shoot a photo album. Well, a children’s photo shoot is doing a big annual promotion. It’s cheap. Abby borrowed money from her classmates and went to pick out clothes. She bought five sets of clothes. On the day of the photo taking, Cindy was late due to traffic jams. The four girls who arrived early were watching the children in front of them taking photos for 100 days. When Cindy came, she hastily made up and was the first one to enter the studio.
Get a film, a few people don’t want to see, ugly. Abby tells them “It’s ok” and goes back to Meitu to pull Cindy’s leg. She changed her micro blog to “Sunshine group” and even started her career as an official micro blogger.
The first photo of Sunshine in 2015
Photo had, record first single, must have own original. The other members didn’t care. They didn’t care what kind of songs they sang. Abby buys songs online from songwriters, pays for a rudimentary recording studio, sets a time for recording, and notits each member. Even so, someone would tell Abby the day before the recording that she couldn’t make it the next day. It had been on and off for two months, and five people couldn’t get it together.
The day of the recording was the first time they had sung together. Abby loved to listen to music, but she didn’t sing, and even her mother never heard her sing, while Dora, who was tone-deaf, didn’t even listen. Yes, one girl band had a tone-deaf member — the other four only realized it the same day they were recording the song. But what of it? Friendship is all that matters, whether she can sing or not.
Because they haven’t been able to get together five people, up to now, Cindy’s voice has not been heard in their famous song Sweet Present, although she is the best singer. The original composer set them up and gave Abby six different pitches. She sat down on the stairwell and listened to them over and over. She couldn’t make any difference.
The song sucks. I’m not gonna make the video. That’s it.
It costs nearly 3,000 yuan to record and edit music — less than 1,000 yuan a semester for a high school student in the small town of Bozhou. Abby does most of the money. She had 200 yuan a week for pocket money and food, plus the occasional money from her mother to buy clothes. It took her more than two months to save up for the recording.
Recorded songs have to be put in storage on music platforms, just like those of real artists. Abby looks for storage companies on Baidu and orders the second one on the list. The other side ask price 200, chop down to 80, storage sogou music and qq music. Abby plans to go through the process of getting 200 news articles, 1,500 twitter certifications, and 2000 encyclopedias, because in her heart, these are what artists are.
This debut, Abby is for real.
2
On the fourth day of 2016, Sunshine turned red.
Because of their ugly appearance and poor singing skills, they were sent to weibo, a popular search site, and didn’t fall off for three days. Sunshine pop red also caused a network of collective joke carnival, and then in a few days there are “boys group”, “girls group” announced debut, without exception, these new groups are to fight ugly debut, but seek notoriety.
The day it went viral, Abby’s phone crashed and couldn’t be turned on. The others didn’t know they were on fire, and Abby called them one by one to tell them “something’s happening on Twitter.” At that time, the QQ space had started refresh Cindy’s photos, Cindy was angry, scold the former classmates “usually do not contact, now a fire what old ancestral graves were dug out by you.
The next day, five girls meet at the school gate, only captain Abby smiling. The most depressing one was Cindy, whose photo was the most widely circulated and became a meme. The result that deliberates more than 10 minutes is: a few days passed, all don’t tell a parent.
They couldn’t hide it. It was more than they expected. Abby goes to Cindy’s house. Cindy’s mom rushes out of the kitchen with a kitchen knife, points at her and asks who created the group? Why are you Posting your photos online? And said to call the police. Abby pretended not to know, Cindy mother scolded her daughter, “so ugly to show off on the Internet.”
Cindy’s mother hopes that her daughter can go to college and become a nurse or an art teacher. She can lead a stable life.
The effect was immediately apparent as reporters flocked to the small town of Bozhou, Anhui province, where several girls were called out in the middle of class and interviewed along with their class teacher. The reporter approached Abby Mom and said, “Aunt Let me talk to you.” The next day, Abby Mom appeared in the entertainment video.
In the school, when the boys found them, they would immediately come around and point at them at the window. Nancy and Cheryl went to the bathroom, followed by a group of girls holding hands. Abby and Cindy ride electric cars. There will be four electric cars chasing them. Feeling unable to run, they threw away their electric bikes and hid in a nearby vegetable field, while their pursuers wandered outside for more than an hour.
Seeing Sunshine’s fame, Faith Music founder Jibin stuffed his official seal, business license and company profile into a backpack and set out to sign them before he could change his clothes. Unable to buy train tickets during the Spring Festival holiday, he put a newspaper on the aisle where he smoked at the train connection and spent the night making do with four transfers to Bozhou.
At Nancy’s father’s company, five children and seven parents lined up around him. He was stunned. The parents demanded money: $500,000 a year for each.
Abby keeps her eyes on Jaybin for the first time, looking him in and out, up and down, trying to get a handle on the man. By the time he went to Bozhou, Abby had done her homework on his company, knew it was registered in Hong Kong and had a branch in Shenzhen, had studied every bit of his circle of friends, and even knew he had two Weibo ids, each of which posted what. Jaybin also realizes that the girl staring at him is the key to the group, and all he has to do is convince Abby.
The parents are not unified. Nancy and Cheryl’s father can’t stand Sunshine being cursed online and wants their daughter to quit. Nancy stands by her father, who complains about her kidnapping in Abby’s presence. Nancy does not contradict her. “I don’t want to talk to you that much and you don’t want to talk to my daughter,” Nancy told her father as she got out of a car with five girls.
Abby’s not happy about it. It’s a one-woman combination she can’t tear down. Abby went to talk to the parents and left them all behind. Eventually Abby convinced everyone to sign the contract, and $500,000 was dropped.
When they signed the contract, the bad blood of the girl group came to light. Nancy asked Cindy to be fired because she didn’t participate in the recording. Cheryl asked for Dora’s dismissal because she was out of tune; Abby is so angry that she wants to fire Nancy and Cheryl because she thinks they are dragging her feet.
No one was expelled, but Jebin convinced them that Sunshine was a whole and they couldn’t do without anyone. Even Dora, who talked the least and couldn’t sing in the group, had to exist.
Three months later, when Sunshine filmed her music video for her second song “I Want to Be Your Girlfriend” at a university in Beijing, a crowd gathered around her. Men approached her to take photos, telling them “I ran down without my long underwear to see you”.
The song foreshadows the rest of the story. On that day, Tencent news broadcast live for two hours, with more than 700,000 people online and more than 5 million people on thumb up, ranking the third in the history of Tencent video broadcast. After the video was shot, the candid camera team “National Talent Scout” took out the level of dealing with a-listers and filmed the whole process with the five girls until they left Beijing by train.
Online rumors, Sunshine into Beijing this trip to shoot the MV spent more than 200,000 yuan, in fact, the shooting was all spent in Abby’s budget “only 2,000 yuan”.
On Taobao, Mr. Jibin bought them clothes for 18 yuan each, found a makeup artist at a plastic surgery hospital and a photographer who was a friend of his. Abby asks, What about your professional team? Jiebin points to his cameraman friend. Where’s your camera? He took a small machine out of his bag. At the school in Bozhou, where He lives, the sun was strong and there was no light shield, so his girlfriend held a scarf to cover the light.
3
In May, Jaybin proposed that Sunshine could go to Beijing for training. Abby, Cindy and Dora agreed, but Nancy and Cheryl’s father once again blocked her. “Go home, go home, do well, learn, learn, wherever, no, go!” “Nancy’s father said slowly. After all, they are only a year away from the gaokao.
Before leaving for Beijing, Nancy’s father took her daughter to Cindy’s house and made a noise in the street. She called Cindy ugly and pointed to her parents, saying that their child had no tutor.
The girls split up. Abby, Cindy, and Dora went to Beijing, and Nancy and Cheryl didn’t hear from them after that. When they came home from their “training”, five of them sat at the same table and didn’t talk to each other.
Life in Beijing is not glamorous. The man of Faith takes the three girls to the “dorm,” an entire corridor of green light, door to door, and Abby remembers the women’s prison. When I reached the door, I pushed the door open — the pink upper and lower bunk made the whole room pink.
The man leading the way pretended to be very high and shouted: “Dangdang ~ surprised or not surprised? !”
The three girls showed no expression.
Cindy: The dormitory and the toilet are not as big as one of her rooms. The bed is only 1.65 meters long. It is not long enough to stretch when sleeping. Three girls and Dora’s mother shared the room for four, and after two days Dora lost weight as the refrigerator opened and there was nothing in it.
Mr. Jibin later said that he paid the girls 3,400 yuan a month in rent, and that according to the contract, he didn’t have to pay for the girls’ accommodation in Beijing.
Abby bought an induction cooker online and went downstairs to pick it up. She saw a sign in the corner and saw the logo. She walked over and pulled it out. Inside the office block, which was still being renovated, people shouted for her to help clean the Windows and move the tables. At night, the office turned into a bar, where three girls sat and became popular.
Abby suspects that faith didn’t have the money to renovate the company until she signed them.
Indeed, Sunshine is the only artist group with “faith”. According to Jibin, the company is for them to set up an office, and five employees, including the boss, also serve for Sunshine. The office’s money and employees’ wages are recorded in Sunshine, which is the cost of the combination.
Afterwards, Abby and media about her experience at that time, many times they had been promised “then you will have a south Korean trainee training”, however, because of “studio haven’t finished,” training haven’t been able to start, the only time dancing lessons because new song MV producer Zhang Kailin asked to see dance moves, only temporary JieBin borrowed a dance studio, find friends to find a teacher, in less than ten class line finished dancing, since then, no longer mention in class.
Some media contact to do an interview, lying in the dormitory and resting, Sunshine received the notice of the company, requiring them to “act” in front of the reporter: the whole company staff use, the bartender to teach singing temporarily, downstairs brother company’s space lent them dance lessons. For two months after the play ended, the three girls lay in their dormitory, watching TV, playing with their cell phones and cooking at the supermarket.
However, in the story to Nancy and Cheryl, Beijing is a different place: they have to go to school every day, and run in the evening. They can’t eat anything with oil, for fear of gaining weight. When Nancy came home, she saw that all three of them had lost weight.
For now, Abby only admits the former — because it was a reason to leave the “faith.”
4
After coming to Beijing, Sunshine continued to be active for two months, participating in more than a dozen activities, at least 7 live broadcasts, as well as online variety shows, game endorsements, movie theme songs and so on. Abby heard from her manager that there will be 500,000 live shows, 120,000 webcams, and 100,000 theme songs sung for the show. These incomes add up to millions of dollars, and they each end up with less than $10, 000 in settlement fees.
At the beginning of her contract, Sunshine had a live event, which lasted an hour and a half and cost 100,000 yuan. At the end of the activity, each member of Sunshine will get 800 yuan and the broker will get 9000 yuan. According to Jibin, the cost of livestream is 70,000 yuan, and marketing is even more expensive: One popular search on Weibo is 60,000 yuan, while the hot topic is 4,500, and the marketing number is divided into 2,500, 5,000 and 20,000, all of which have been bought for Sunshine. “Girls don’t understand this. They still think they are naturally so hot.”
He compared Sunshine to Pang Melang, who also made a career out of ugliness and betraying his former agent: “A couple that doesn’t have the strength suddenly goes on fire. It’s like they don’t have to go through the process of hard work, and she finds it easy. They don’t understand the efforts of those behind the scenes.”
Abby feels the distribution is unfair and that she is “at the mercy of others.” Before that, the girls’ conflicts came from money. Every time there was an activity, they almost had a quarrel about how much money they had and how to spend it. Finally, at the end of September 2016, Abby, Cindy and Dora announced that they were going home for The National Day holiday and never came back to the company.
“Girls don’t understand this. They still think they are naturally so hot.” “Girls don’t understand this. They still think they are naturally so hot.”
Before a recording, Abby quietly will own WeChat qr code set as a screensaver, smoothly added “I want to be your girlfriend” producer zhang kailin WeChat. Since then, Zhang Kailin replaced Jibin and became the new “boss” of Sunshine — however, Until now Zhang Kailin has not signed a formal contract with them, which means investment, so he did not dare to make this bet.
Faith is essentially a marketing company, while Behind Mr Zhang is a music production company. Abby wants to be a serious entertainer. She doesn’t want any more marketing and hype.
The arrangement of the song “I want to Be Your Girlfriend” is zhang Kailin’s friend. When Zhang Kailin found a friend who wanted to make a song, the other person was not willing, because before the friend asked the colleague who made music around him, the other person told him that Sunshine is too low. If you make a song for Sunshine, no one will find you to make a song any more. In the end, Zhang advised his friend that your songs could only be heard through the warmth of Sunshine, otherwise your things are good but they will never be heard. Finally, the friend agreed, told the sound repair division must be good post sound processing.
Sunshine’s other new song, “Flower of Honey”, took Zhang Kelin an afternoon to write and the three girls didn’t get the score until the day before the recording. In the studio, it took three hours to record a song — the typical recording time for a song in the industry — but the two girls were always out of tune and melody, and one was tone-deaf. It ended up taking two days to finish.
“I Want to Be Your Girlfriend” was described by erdi, a well-known music blogger on Weibo, as “a combination of local and western style, heavy production and crude singing, calling it ‘industrial humor'”. Of course, he also pointed out that it was all due to the arrangement and production, and that “none of the girls can sing”.
In addition, members of Sunshine try to compensate for their lack of strength in other ways. Cindy is going to do the splits for the new song, but she’s 17 years old and in shape. It’s so hard to do the splits, even her dance teacher can’t get off. Abby supervised her and felt that the split was not straight enough and not the standard 180 degrees, so both Dora and Her husband held Cindy’s leg in their arms and pressed down. Cindy cried.
Abby wanted Cheryl and Nancy to quit the group. She even refused to let them continue using the name Sunshine, thinking that they looked like clowns and would damage the group’s image.
“I wanted to do Sunshine in a better direction, and they couldn’t keep up with me,” Abby says. “I wanted to get better and better, to break the impression, not to keep the impression, to keep making money.”
5
In his own telling, Jaybin is able to mobilize the resources of the entertainment industry: before Abby, Cindy, and Dora left, he had signed several network dramas for Abby, one of which was anti-Girl one; He planned to let Cindy go to the foreign red carpet, which of course cost money, while Dora would take the two-dimension route. This year, intended to arrange their domestic all about music award – Taiwan art award has been shortlisted, 24 games tour around the country are finalized in September last year, on October 5, and want to be in Hong Kong to attend the activities, weibo night, fashion rookie, Chinese golden melody awards all within the scope of the expected, strength singer took the prize, each other even posters all ready, even promised the opportunity to stage. They include variety shows like “Day Day Up”, “Ace against ace” and even the Spring Festival Gala on Beijing TV.
He and the girls told Nancy and Cheryl about an event that ended with the words, “You have to have a class, so I’m going to skip it.”
He had hoped to make Sunshine into a long-term success case. Several ugly duckling girls turned gorgeously and became white swans under the eyes. Even now, he was not willing to use Sunshine’s microblog to receive advertisements.
However, Jaybin has been unable to contact the three escapees and, most importantly, Abby.
Sunshine is still in the “belief”, Zhang Kaelin said to Jiebin, Abby is not suitable to be an artist, she is too thoughtful, low control, more suitable to be a manager, when a businessman, when the boss, just like her father. Jaybin also believes that Abby is still taking the combo forward, and that it is Abby’s ambition to abandon it once she realizes she can’t carry it anymore.
Abby was the only one in the group who knew what she wanted. Cindy and Dora rarely expressed their opinions. They were afraid of making mistakes, even when it came to their affairs.
Dora was born in a rural family with two older sisters. When she was a child, her sister called her “Stinky”. After she became famous, this name changed to “Flower Goddess”, which was beyond the experience of the whole family. Although Cindy’s parents dote on her as a civil servant, she has low self-esteem, and care about appearance. Abby often degrades Cindy in front of many people.
To them, Abby is an authority figure, and when they chose the captain, they decided on Abby. Abby talked fast, and a high school desk mate described her as a “reasonable person who can leave you dumbstruck.” When it came time to practice the Honey dance, Dora was a slow learner and Abby taught her how to do it, but she still couldn’t. By the evening, Dora had written Abby to admit her mistake and the affair was over.
Abby wants to be a serious entertainer. She doesn’t want any more marketing and hype. Abby wants to be a serious entertainer. She doesn’t want any more marketing and hype.
Abby took care of Cindy and Dora in Her days in Beijing. She did all the cooking, grocery shopping, laundry and housework by herself: she got up at 6 o ‘clock every morning, prepared breakfast for the three of them, then read books and took online classes by herself, while Cindy and Dora stayed in bed until 10 o ‘clock. When lunch was ready at noon, it was usually three dishes and one soup, which was better than when Cindy was at home. She chose both Cindy’s and Dora’s clothes online. Cindy’s parents were relieved after a long time. Cindy’s grandma directly called Abby to ask about Cindy’s situation.
Abby grew up with no more than three friends. She doesn’t have girlfriends and doesn’t need girlfriends. She doesn’t have a need to talk to other people.
Having been in Beijing for more than a year, the three girls barely know anyone except For Jie Bin and Zhang Kelin, who work for the company. They live only near the southeastern fifth Ring Road. Some girls are not polite. They don’t know how to greet the seniors when they meet them at the activity. They don’t know how to say thank you even when someone helps them, not to mention making friends on their own initiative.
To date, Abby WeChat has no more than 30 friends. Zhang kailin, Cindy and trumpets, Dora and trumpets, her own trumpet, file transfer assistant, mom, dad and brother have taken up 10 positions. Nancy and Cheryl had already been removed from the list of friends. One day, Nancy looked for Dora on her mobile phone and found that Dora had disappeared forever, and she could only find out the news of her former best friend through her microblog.
In March 2016, Sunshine participated in the reality show “Appearance Level War”.
Now, Jaybin can only see Abby through public channels, they appeared on the variety show “Bump brain club”, but also revealed that he once tried to unwritten rules Cindy, “we will never die, and then the boss jumped from our house, forcing Cindy to play with him.
The meme became the title of the show to attract traffic. In addition, in one session, Cindy needed to sell chewing gum. She set a line for herself: “Men are like chewing gum. If they lose their flavor, they will get a new one.”
He felt that his work had been suddenly destroyed, “not suitable for their age, lost the most innocent thing.”
Abby doesn’t want to wear heels and feels out of step with her age. Ms. Zhang tells her that you are an entertainer now, and that high heels will enhance your onstage presence. Eventually, Abby accepts. On Weibo, Cindy’s makeup also tends to be pompous, European and American, characterized by exaggerated eyeliner, which is inseparable from Zhang Kelin’s new image positioning.
Now on the show, the three girls wear heavy makeup, wear sky-high shoes and talk about everything. Another popular show on Weibo this year, Transparent, featured the girls Shouting “Ugly and not for you to see” in response to criticism.
Jiebin asked Zhang Kailin to talk to him, and the other side said “think about it”. Two days later, he turned him down. At the same time, the girls, and Abby in particular, keep pouring dirt on him, portraying him as a liar.
A friend tells him, “Jackie, you can’t even play with Abby. That’s too low.”
Zhang Kelin also told him that when the time comes Abby find the media one by one burst your material, you will have no say. Why is that? Because Abby is a minor, everyone will believe her when she says something. People will think you are bullying a child.
But Zhang Kailin has never been born in 2000 Abby as a child, “you may think she is a child do not know anything, is used by all kinds of people, blindly dream of the star, in fact she knows, she knows what Jiebin wants, also know what I want.
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