New Song: Àimèi de Guānxi 暧昧的关系
My humble home recording studio has gotten quite a workout this past week as I finished up (finally) my second Chinese pop song: Àimèi de Guānxi 暧昧的关系.
Inspirational Story
The idea for this song came from one week of class when the topic for my English major students was romance and relationships. Invariably, in every class, someone would ask me how to say àimèi 暧昧 in English. I told them just to say "unclear" because it's easier to remember than "ambiguous."Apparently, an àimèi 暧昧 relationship is one where they haven't had the DTR (Defining The Relationship) talk but it's obvious to everyone that there's some huàxué 化学 there. Ringing in my ears at the end of the week was one brief exchange I heard between two of the girl students. One said, "I really don't like àimèi 暧昧," to which the second replied with a coy smile, "I like àimèi 暧昧." Those opposing ideas were the inspiration for the song.Much of the rest of the vocabulary came from the same week of classes when students would ask me how to say various things in English and I would learn the Chinese in the process.
Composition Notes
Musically, I was trying to compose a sort of "happy" pop rock inspired mostly by Mayday 五月天.Lyrically, I wanted to try the "A" rhyme scheme (as discussed here) just to see how hard that really is to do. As a result, the verses each have the following rhyme scheme:
AAAAAAAAVerdict: not really that hard, but a little bit tedious. Besides, the chorus was the first part of the song I wrote, and that didn't follow the same pattern (AABC, DDEC for the chorus).I hope you enjoy!