What was China listening to in 2023?

Picking through Chinese music platforms' end of year lists

Hello and welcome to Concrete Avalanche, a newsletter about music from China. Thank you for reading.

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In this issue: a special edition looking over the 2023 end of year lists from some of China’s top music platforms, featuring everyone from Jay Chou to NewJeans, from No Party for Cao Dong to Taylor Swift, and from Xia Zhiyu to 8 Immortals Restaurant.

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“What was China listening to?” is a nice line to draw you in (sorry), but as I noted last year, “it’s hard to be comprehensive when you’re talking about a population of ~1.4 billion”. It’s even harder when the major streaming sites are a little evasive about their stats and the methodology behind their end of year lists.

Still, there are some interesting overviews out there that help us grasp a little bit of the picture.

We’ll get into the end of year lists from China’s top streaming platforms in a moment, but first, as a snapshot overview, here’s the country focus page on China from the latest IFPI report:

NetEase Cloud Music, one of China’s biggest music streaming platforms, declared Xi’an rapper Capper’s Uniconfication its Chinese language album of the year. The English language album of 2023? Taylor Swift’s 1989 (Taylor’s Version).

Interesting to see Taiwan’s No Party for Cao Dong in at number five, while (G)I-dle’s presence in the top five points to what was a relatively good year for K-pop in China after a patchy history impacted by geopolitical tensions. Similarly, NewJeans ranked well on Tencent, Apple Music and Douban’s end of year lists (more on those below).

Active Faults

has already predicted a strong 2024 for K-pop in China.

Scrolling through NetEase’s 2023 round-up to its “hottest rock tracks” — a list topped by No Party for Cao Dong’s ‘Lie’ — there are two songs from TV talent contest The Big Band in the top five: ‘Flowers’ by Huichundan and 8 Immortals Restaurant’s cover of Zhang Yusheng’s ‘Singleton Travel Log’. Neither of these bands finished in the show’s final “Hot 5”. ‘Fallacy’ by Vareihnaz, the show’s biggest viral hit, tops NetEase’s folk song chart for 2023.

How TV show The Big Band became a surprise haven of expression in China

Slightly less accessible is the end of year run down from China’s music streaming (and other things) behemoth Tencent. I delayed the release of this newsletter to see if anything interesting came out of their major 2023 TME Chart awards (announced at 8pm China time on January 24), but at first glance there’s not much to talk about. I’ll update this piece later if I change my mind after a more thorough read.

Tencent’s QQ Music released an earlier list that comprises individual records with their own award title, rather than any sort of top 10. So we get Dao Lang’s Mountain Songs are Lonely declared “best mainland album”, and Jackson Yee’s Liu Yanfen as “best physical album”, but not a lot of clarity on how they stack up against each other.

Miley Cyrus’ ‘Flowers’ was named as “best overseas song”, Wu Bai and China Blue’s ‘Tear Bridge’ was “best nostalgic song”, and Taylor Swift wins “best US/European song” with ‘Slut!’ — but again, there’s not a lot of detail on how these titles have been bestowed.

The annual report from Douyin (China’s TikTok sibling) doesn’t have a dedicated music section and doesn’t seem overly concerned with it as a category. But there are some interesting mentions of music under some of the report’s other headings. Traditional instruments are singled out as a particular area that saw a growth in interest on the short video platform in 2023 and sparked a series of “hot topics” around the erhu, guzheng, xiao, guqin and other traditional instruments. Could be a good time for a Chinese rock band incorporating the guqin into their sound… oh.

In terms of pop music, we get a top 10 songs word cloud-style graphic and a list of the most viral moments based around live concerts:

Meddhi Fu’s ‘Running Wildly on the Grass’ is top of the songs list, with British singer-songwriter Mae Stephens’ ‘If We Ever Broke Up’ sneaking into the top 10. ‘Zimogeni’, in the large purple bubble above, is a new year song by Shanhe, which has been remixed a bunch of times but interestingly is sung partly in the Yi language, primarily found in Yunnan, Sichuan and Guizhou.

Top of the concerts topic list is old-school Taiwanese pop-rocker Wu Bai not really needing to open his mouth at a show due to the audience singing all the words.

Speaking of nostalgia-mining Taiwanese stars… it’s not hugely relevant based on its reported market share, but check out Apple Music’s list of “the most played hits in Mainland China” on its platform in 2023:

Yep, the entire top 10 is Jay Chou songs. Actually, almost the entire top 20 is songs from the King of Mandopop. ‘Qi Li Xiang’ at number one came out in 2004.

(Taylor Swift is the first non-Asian star to appear on Apple’s list, with ‘Cruel Summer’ landing at number 60.)

More interesting is Douban’s run down of music in 2023, especially for this newsletter, with a number of the artists featured here last year popping up in its rankings. Douban has long been surpassed in relevance as a music platform by the likes of Douyin and NetEase, but it still gets some of the most thoughtful reviews on the Chinese internet (it’s great for films and books too).

Let’s begin with their highest rated albums of the year:

You can make out the international acts, but fascinating to see hip hop record Young Fresh Chin II taking the number two spot, an album I wrote about here:

The Rap of China returns + summery Qingdao rock

Some of the scores and rankings don’t quite make sense here (Lana Del Rey’s record isn’t actually the highest rated based solely on this graphic, for example). Presumably it’s something to do with the ratio / volume of reviews.

There’s a separate list of the highest-rated EPs, where LDR does well again, coming second with A&W, behind South Korea-based Japanese girl group XG and with an equal score to The Beatles’ Now and Then.

Above are the “most followed” rock albums of the year, presumably related to the number of views the review page got. The return of Taiwanese band No Party for Cao Dong was a big deal, reflected in their album ranking top of this list. Also notable: WaChi’s Outskirts (sixth) was the subject of a lot of buzz and Instinkto Industrio (eighth) got more attention than I realised at the time.

While Douban’s hip hop list is topped by Zhiyu Xia’s Young Fresh Chin II, overall it’s one of the most internationally-flavoured charts, with Taiwanese rap OG MC Hotdog, Korean act Stray Kids, and US artists Noname, Jpegmafia x Danny Brown, Tyler, the Creator and Billy Woods x Kenny Segal all making the cut alongside LA-based producer Lu1.

The electronic section also featured an interesting sweep of records:

The late great Ryuichi Sakamoto, a widely respected figure in Chinese music circles, is top here. Folk-turned-electronic artist Zhang Weiwei is in at number three, unexpectedly sandwiched between Yaeji and Kylie Minogue.

Half-Chinese Icelandic singer Laufey sits atop the jazz pile, with Li Daiguo and Lao Dan’s experimental bBb bBb project in third, Mongolian singer Enji in fifth, and Beijing-based improvisational trio FluFlaFen in eighth.

And that’s it. Conclusions? You should definitely subscribe to Concrete Avalanche if you don’t already! Seriously though, it’s great to see so many of the indie releases spotlighted in this very newsletter making their way onto charts like this. Here’s hoping for more recognition for China’s most interesting artists in 2024.

Back to normal with a round-up of the best new music coming out of China next issue.