Zhang Liyin "Agape" MV is out!!

[sassylina.livejournal.com]

source: smtown

Comments

[yejun.livejournal.com]

The song is amazing
Tao and Vic are amazing
Liyin is amazing

... yeah :3

[rikayla.livejournal.com]

Before people ask, here's what the music video is about... Liyin wrote the lyrics herself!

"Agape" is a ballad accompanied by an emotional and prominent piano melody, though the song lyrics start with a quiet atmosphere, you can feel the majestic yet mournful expression of Zhang Liyin's vocals in the song chorus.

The theme for "Agape" is the 2008 Sichuan earthquake; co-written by Zhang Liyin and Tina Wang, is about a mother who allows her child to live at the expense of her own life. The mother's hand is left holding a cellphone containing her dying words "Child, don't forget that mother will always love you, you must continue and live courageously" - that sort of content, no matter if you are in China or overseas, you can feel the greatness of a mother's love. Seeing these lyrics, Zhang Liyin thought of her home province's Sichuan earthquake, and thought to use this song to comfort the earthquake's victims and the victims' families.

"Back Then" is a cover of the title song from Taiwanese film "You Are The Apple of My Eye". Title song "Agape" fuses together a melody of soft piano and acoustic guitar. Quietly whispering and deeply emotional, Zhang Liyin sings a new feeling that will allow people to think back on their first love.

Full Translation Credit: Chocolyn (http://chocolyn.org/forums/topic/286-zhang-liyin-releases-official-agape-music-video/)

[post-dada.livejournal.com]

Holy Freud, that plotline.

[rennehollic.livejournal.com]

the acting is pretty good and I'm honestly surprised!
you go guys!
the song is wonderful, but then again, it's LiYin, of course it's the best thing in the whole universe!

now, I'm kinda confused. his mom died, he meets victoria who looks like her, then they get closer, she starts liking him but then she finds out he only got closer to her because she looks like his late mother so she leaves?
idk that's what I think xD

[rikayla.livejournal.com]

yeah, he wanted to protect victoria the same way his mom protected him during the earthquake.

[rennehollic.livejournal.com]

I suck at reading plot-lines so if I got this one right, it's a win for me xD

[untrueo.livejournal.com]

Li Yin, No words can express my admiration for this woman. 'I Will' is still on my playlist.
Tao, I love this side of you. Ah, so torn!

I liked the plot idea behind the MV but why does the ending feel rushed toward the end. One thing I can't forgive is the bad special effects editing. For that reason alone, I have to personally edit this video.

[missingmisnomer.livejournal.com]

zly looks beautiful in that field. tao needs to get some drama roles. vic did a great job too.

[bauci.livejournal.com]

ia, other exo members have had mv appearances but they always felt 'well, just putting this view-booster here' (even with xiumin...), Tao seemed completely part of it

[vermicelli-rice.livejournal.com]

Pretty song. I like Vic's acting here

[adenar.livejournal.com]

This is my first time listening to her, it was slightly different from what I expected. She sounds like she'd have been an awesome opera singer, if she'd chosen to go down that path. She sounds like she has a very clear tone (aside from the editing obviously).

Vic <3

[rikayla.livejournal.com]

just curious, what sort of voice were you expecting from her? :)

[adenar.livejournal.com]

More modern? I'm very bad when it comes to describing voices. I certainly didn't expect it to sound so classical, she has a very smooth delivery - with many ballad singers (and most pop singers) you can really hear the shift when they move into their 'power' voice but hers all flows together.

[rikayla.livejournal.com]

is it her tone? that it's huskier than most cpop female singers?
i'm always curious to people's first impression of her. because when i first listened to her it was back in 2007, so i've grown accustomed to her voice. back then her voice was less technically trained, but now it's much more polished

[adenar.livejournal.com]

I'm not 100% sure whether what I think husky is actually matches with what husky is and I'm also not familiar with cpop so I couldn't say! You can definitely tell she's polished her technique but it's also sounds fairly effortless and smooth. Her voice really suits low register/anything she can put power behind - if there's something she needs to work on it's her softer high notes, which sometimes sound thin and a bit grainy, though it's telling that she's able to put vibrato in at the end, shows she still has good control and isn't just letting the notes fly and hope for the best. I read in a previous post someone talked about her vocal range and I was surprised at how narrow it is (and probably inaccurate), perhaps she's more comfortable in an alto range, hence why her quieter high notes would be more uncomfortable?

If I could contrast it to a kpop idol (as I can't do with cpop) I would say it's comparable (for me) to Dia of Kiss&Cry? People'll laugh and say 'lol nugu tho' but Dia honestly has one of the best techniques in the business, as evidenced in her Let It Go cover where she has the ability to actually /shape/ that godawful note at the end (it should be considered disrespectful to be that good lol) but where Dia definitely has the lightness for a pop/musical performer, Liyin has the groundedness and flow of a ballad singer/operatic singer. If that makes sense.

[rikayla.livejournal.com]

i have absolutely no knowledge in terms of vocal technicalities LOL, but i think her range is much wider than people think it is. all i know is that it was pretty narrow back in the day, but now she has learned to sing cpop style (which is a higher pitch) compared to kpop (which is lower). she has improved so much over the years, so it impresses me now that SM can release a song like this one and i know that she can nail every single live performance effortlessly.

[adenar.livejournal.com]

lol i went back and checked that post i'm so sorry for my hugeass comment on your old post.

if i was sat in sm's basement for five years i'd be damned pissed with myself if i didn't come out with almost-perfect technique lol, i'm intrigued as to how sm is going to market her, do you know if sm actually manages to have much sway in the chinese market?

[rikayla.livejournal.com]

i think SM's power in china depends on who they market. if it's EXO, yeah, they have power to leverage event organizers and ask "if you want EXO to perform, you also need to invite ZLY." i think previously, because ZLY was a nobody, it was tougher to invite her (she was basically SJM's extra member for like 2 years straight, it was so embarrassing), but now ZLY is getting known a little bit more as a soloist (as her own individual brand), so it's easier to get invitations to promote and stuff.

[adenar.livejournal.com]

ah, that's good. i guess at the end of the day it'll taste sweeter that she got the popularity on her own talent rather than just sm's sway.

[rikayla.livejournal.com]

Liyin performed the live version last Saturday already ;)
Only a fancam, but she also recorded a performance for Simply K-Pop this past Monday.

[floptbh.livejournal.com]

for a soloist ballad singer, i expected her to be perfect live. don't get me wrong she sounds great but her voice isn't as strong as i expected.

[empyrealmaiden.livejournal.com]

SLAAAAAAAAAAY. Her voice sounds perfect and she looks stunning in the fields. Honestly, ZLY can carry a MV on her own but I can't say I don't enjoy these storyline MVs.

[asnindie.livejournal.com]

Holy Mcdonalds product placement

The MV was really sad though. These two actually make a rather attractive pair and Vic just looked straight up gorgeous.

Yeah...

[hipployta.livejournal.com]

See I totally understood him following her around and wanting to protect her, because she's a doppelganger of his Mom, but then the McDonald's scene happened...how oedipal

However it was well acted! Go Vic and Tao!

I remember when that text was going around the news after the earthquake and she and the baby were found...so sad

Zhang Li Yin looks gorgeous

[xkeirafanx.livejournal.com]

I won't even lie, I already cried when I just heard the song and of course I cried again watching this.

Liyin looks beautiful, of course sounds beautiful and Vic and Tao do a good job.

[jrt131n.livejournal.com]

I could not be there for the very last scene. I would be to scared that a bird would crap on me....

[kjc48.livejournal.com]

Love the song (I'm a sucker for Mando ballads...which is weird because Ballads bore me).

I'm not seeing that stellar acting everyone else is commenting about, but congrats to ZLY. (fingers crossed that this will chart well)

[rikayla.livejournal.com]

Victoria's acting was kinda awkward lol...
The song has charted to #3 on Baidu already! I hope its success on Baidu will go over to Taiwan and other Chinese music charts.

[kjc48.livejournal.com]

YAY! You're girl better slay!

[kjc48.livejournal.com]

There were definitely some snicker worthy moments, and awkward chemistry between this couple (I blame it on the fact that she looks like his mom). Vic looked great though (as always).

[cairistiona.livejournal.com]

Well that was really sad. :(
And she sounds amazing!

[miuratenshi.livejournal.com]

It's such a pretty song and a sad MV. ;~;

[undeniablysarah.livejournal.com]

So good. Why has SM been hiding her this whole time. She has legit talent!

[sakuragirl24.livejournal.com]

gorgeous song and gorgeous voice! It gave me goosebumps

[lovejae23.livejournal.com]

welp i'm surprised they didn't delay this due to the earthquake scenes

[bauci.livejournal.com]

WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT???

[bauci.livejournal.com]

I'm blown away by the song.
but holy shit, get this kid some acting gigs.

[syimato.livejournal.com]

this MV is based on real life of the rescue time finding a mother died while protecting her baby during the earthquake. before she died she left a message for her baby on her cellphone.

I think the reason Victoria left him after she finds out that Tao get closed to her because of her resemblance to his deceased mother, is because she may have grown to like him. She was all flustered when Tao fixed her tie.

[dharawal.livejournal.com]

Ok, not gonna lie, Tao crying made me cry too, wanted to give him a hug.


I think I have a new bias now, bye Luhan.

[aeries-amethyst.livejournal.com]

Ugh, this song is so beautiful, Liyin's voice gave me so much feels and the video had me in tears! It's so sad! T_T

[luxelet.livejournal.com]

the storyline seriously creeped me out but i like the explanation for it. quoting from the top comment on youtube lol

" this is the meaning of the mv (got it from a fb comment)
This is a true story of a Mother’s Sacrifice during the China Earthquake.
After the Earthquake had subsided, when the rescuers reached the ruins of a young woman’s house, they saw her dead body through the cracks. But her pose was somehow strange that she knelt on her knees like a person was worshiping; her body was leaning forward, and her two hands were supported by an object. The collapsed house had crashed her back and her head.

With so many difficulties, the leader of the rescue team put his hand through a narrow gap on the wall to reach the woman’s body. He was hoping that this woman could be still alive. However, the cold and stiff body told him that she had passed away for sure.
He and the rest of the team left this house and were going to search the next collapsed building. For some reasons, the team leader was driven by a compelling force to go back to the ruin house of the dead woman. Again, he knelt down and used his had through the narrow cracks to search the little space under the dead body. Suddenly, he screamed with excitement,” A child! There is a child! “

The whole team worked together; carefully they removed the piles of ruined objects around the dead woman. There was a 3 months old little boy wrapped in a flowery blanket under his mother’s dead body. Obviously, the woman had made an ultimate sacrifice for saving her son. When her house was falling, she used her body to make a cover to protect her son. The little boy was still sleeping peacefully when the team leader picked him up.

The medical doctor came quickly to exam the little boy. After he opened the blanket, he saw a cell phone inside the blanket. There was a text message on the screen. It said,” If you can survive, you must remember that I love you.” This cell phone was passing around from one hand to another. Every body that read the message wept. ” If you can survive, you must remember that I love you.” Such is the mother’s love for her child!!"