A few days ago I saw UNIC post Tong Ange’s “Keep the Roots” (“把根留住”), and it stirred up nostalgia — this was one of the songs I used to hear a lot as a child.
Speaking of which, when I was very little (probably in the early 90s, anyway very little, about not yet in elementary school), I often went out with my parents to socialize over meals, and we’d often end up singing karaoke. We also sang at home sometimes. I remember that back then it was played on those huge LD discs; CDs seemed only just to be coming into common use.
“Keep the Roots” seems to have been one of my dad’s signature songs (he also had “The Sound of Waves Still the Same” (“涛声依旧”), etc.; those are the only two I remember); then my mom, I remember, had a song called “The Story of a Small Town” (“小城故事”); and as for me, I had one too, and this was it.
When I happened to search for Tong Ange, I saw the three characters “Jeliah” (“耶利亚”), and immediately remembered the very first pop song I ever sang. Of course, later on I sang quite a few others too, such as “Keep the Roots,” “The Story of a Small Town,” “Xiao Fang,” “The Moon Represents My Heart,” and so on. And later still, I stopped singing.
Clearly, the main reason “Jeliah Girl” became the first song I learned was that its lyrics were just too simple… Mm, I obviously learned the second half first — “Jeliah, mysterious Jeliah, Jelie Jeliah…” — I could sing it even without looking at the subtitles ~, and at the time I probably didn’t know that many characters either.
Compared with the poetic and profound lyrics of songs like “Keep the Roots,” this “Jeliah” is obviously as simple as can be. But simplicity taken to a certain level is often very moving.
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- Yi Wu
2007-10-20 21:16:44
Tong Ange’s, Teresa Teng’s, and a whole bunch of others are songs I grew up listening to…
There’s often a very amusing phenomenon: when you hear a certain tune, your first reaction is “I’ve heard this before,” and then you realize you heard it when you were very little, yet now you can follow and sing along so effortlessly… it feels as if something has possessed you…
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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