The Shanghaiist has come up trumps this weekend with a showcase of over a dozen songs to have been shortlisted for the honour of the official Beijing Olympics theme song.
The songs come from some of the creme de la creme of the Chinese pop world, including Andy Lau (Andy Liu), S.H.E. and numerous participants past and present from the ‘Super Girls‘ TV contest (Chinese versions of Pop Idol/American Idol).
The videos are interesting; they seem to feature the whole A to Z of Olympic sports, from archery to fencing to shooting to volley ball (ok, A to V). Interestingly Andy Lau and Han Hong & Yu Quan have opted to feature paralympic stories – as has been discussed here before disability is not a particularly open topic in China. A cynic may suggest this is for commercial reasons, but Bob would never be so unkind.
The Beijing Olympics Blog would like to put it’s considerable weight behind it’s favourite song; Fly together 一起飞 by Tan Jing (谭晶) and Yan Wei Wen (阎维文) (above). Bob is at risk of sounding like an old fuddy-duddy by choosing this tune – one of the more old-fashioned efforts featuring less fashionable artists – but in defence it is the most rousing of the songs, and features some nice shots of Beijing landmarks in the video. A close second is I’m a Star by Emil Chau for the shameless use of cute children. Olympic sponsors Coca-cola have been busy again, heavily branding the star-studded entry from Hong Kong artists S.H.E, Wil Pan andJacky Cheung.
Let’s hope the selectors choose wisely, as we will all be hearing the winning song an awful lot this summer!
The Shanghaiist also included the song Welcome to Beijing (above), released to mark the 100 day countdown to the start of the Biejing Olympics.
