Lyrics in the Songs of Mayday

“怎麼去擁有一道彩虹 ／怎麼去擁抱一夏天的風／天上的星星笑地上的人／總是不能懂不能覺得足夠” 《知足》

“不知道不明瞭不想要/為什麼我的心 / 明明是想靠近 / 卻孤單到黎明” 《溫柔》

“逆風的方向／更適合飛翔／我不怕千萬人阻擋／只怕自己投降／我和我最後的倔強／握緊雙手絕對不放／下一站是不是天堂／就算失望不能絕望” 《倔強》

It is reported that there must at least one song comes from Mayday that is singing for your youth. Their songs seemed have been growing as a popular cultural phenomenon since they appeared in people’s eyes. We cannot only define Mayday’s music as rhythm and melody, but the combination of rock and poetry. They showed their special attitudes to friendship, love and dream, which make their songs so powerful and attractive that are able to give people, especially the young generation, a profound influence and leave positive and optimistic values to them. To figure out the charming of their music, it is necessary to look into their lyrics which can definitely be appreciated as poetries.

Mayday was a rock band that formed in 1997 in Taiwan with 5 members who are Ashine, Masa, Guan You, Monster and Stone and this year was their 20th anniversary with 9 albums. Mayday won the Golden Melody Award for Best Band for 4 times and was known as the “King of Concert” in Taiwan. All of their songs were written by themselves and most of them were inspired by their own life, for example, their new album <History of Tomorrow> was talking about their own experience of music, however, some of their songs were stimulated by films or other literature works, such as “Armour” (武装) which was influenced by the Chinese literature 《孽子》. The themes of their music were vary from vitalities of youth, conflicts between dream and reality to values of friendship and love. No matter what kind of topic they talked about, passion of life was always the common point exposed to their music.

In order to express their attitudes to life, language of lyrics became their powerful weapon. Just as Fang Wenshan’s comment on Ashine’s lyrics- If the lyrics themselves can also show text tension without melody, that is poetry, Ashine’s lyrics, of course, not only are poetry, but also full of tension in life, it is definitely worth the name of “rock poetry”! The biggest glamour of their music is that the language of those lyrics were able to arouse the commonsense among mass audiences no matter what kind of themes they want cover. In their work collections, dream and love could be counted as the commonest topic all of their albums. Taking their latest albums as an example, there were 6 out of 13 songs was written about dream or the process of chasing dreams and there were around 40% among their all of their works were talking about dream or life purpose. Here we can study the language of their lyrics basing on various themes of their music basing on those two themes.

I. Dream

Even they created so many similar content, people seems never feel tired of their songs, which may due to Ashine’s proficient skills of using soliloquy to tie the audience to their lyrics. For instance, Ashine narrated his upset and slight helpless in the song <The Apple> as:

經過了漫長的等候／夢想是夢想／我還是一個我 那時間忘記挽留最美時候／不經意匆匆的放過 曾經想擁抱的彩虹／盛開的花朵／那純真的笑容／突然有風吹過／那一轉眼／只剩我

The brief summary of his experience about life sounded like he was talking to himself his feeling of loneliness under the violent reality, however, it could arouse people’s commonsense because, facing with failure, most of us may feel like there is nothing we can do with our dream but helpless. Therefore, in spite of only simple soliloquy, it shorted the distance between audience and the author effectively and touched people easily.

II.Love

Whatever they tend to sing for love among family or the amativeness between lovers, symbols and contrast were the common literature elements they prefer to use. For example, in the song of “Washing Machine”, Ashine wrote that:

木訥的洗衣機／從沒有主題曲／只有風霜灰塵讓人不想接近

從來沒有一句的怨言／你丟多少它都洗

脫水總是全心又全力／直到顫抖了身體

多少年了／旋轉又旋轉／時間一眨眼過去

上了年紀／卻依然盡力／孤獨勇敢洗衣機

突然有天／好想要幫忙衣服放進洗衣機

才發現了／它早就壞了／只是捨不得換新

奇怪是誰一直清洗著／我闖的禍和污泥

好久以來／原來我衣服／全部都是媽媽洗

From those two paragraphs, it is obvious that Washing Machine was a symbol that to be used to present his mother, there were also other symbols, such as “coffeemaker” “refrigerator” and “Television” in this lyric, we all love such furniture when we were child! So there comes a clear contrast in our mind, which can inform us to care more about our own mother and thanks for she always give without taking. Moreover, those contrast words always reflect the unspeakable conflict in our life as well, which give us a channel to express our complex emotion properly. For example, there were always appear words such as “flux and re-flux” “laugh and cry” “give up and insist” “dark and light” or “life and death”, those opposite words were able to describe that our life are always full of conflicts, we have dreams but there are always unlimited heavy realities, we have happy moment but it seems sad moment comes more frequently, therefore, their lyrics was quite as real as our life and that is why they are so attractive.

Furthermore, backing to what I said in the first paragraph, their music raised as new cultural phenomenon among people, create a deep influence on the whole society, especially for the young generation. Resent years, most producers are inclined to write songs about the love between young women and men in order to obtain commercial profits as much as possible. Thus, it is hard to image that Mayday’s works, which are prefer to pass the positive attitude to our society or to persuade people believe dreams, can become a great hit even lead to a new population in our society.

Their works were widely accepted by the mass audiences may due to two aspects. In the one hand, the more and more competitive society gives a heavier and heavier pressure to the new generation, facing with various challenges and negative reality, Mayday’s songs give us courage to move on and continue believing that our dream will come true one day, as long as we never give it up. In this case, the demands of encouragements and positive energies were intensified by today’s society, which means our society need their songs as a channel to help people to balance the distance between dream and reality. In the other hand, they are not trying to sing the praises of how braw a dream is, on the contrary, they preferred to show as much as difficulties, challenges and failures they encountered on the way they chase their dreams, however, they would always turn their way to positive:

時間如果可以倒流 / 我想我還是 / 會卯起來蹉跎 / 反正就這樣吧/ 我知道我努力過 《一顆蘋果》 期待一種永恆／即使傷痕／也奮不顧身／生命還沒有黃昏／下一站／你的第二人生 《第二人生》 我不願一生曬太陽吹風／咸魚也要有夢 《鹹魚》

These kind of attitude effectively encouraged audiences to overcome their tough days is much realer so that people would treat their work as their faith rather than commercial media product, that is why people are willing to believe them.

In conclusion, Mayday’s songs exit as a fascinating dream maker, they use their poetic lyrics and the attitude of rock to inject positive energies to every people who are struggling for their dreams. It is quite a valuable art in the more and more commercial media industry.

References:

Kelly, J. D. (2006). BOOK REVIEW: Paul Martin Lester: Visual Communication: Images With Messages. Visual Communication Quarterly, 13(4), 258-259. doi:10.1207/s15551407vcq1304_7

Film criticism. (1987). Meadville, PA: Allegheny College.

五月天阿信：《Happy·Birth·Day 搖滾詩的誕生與轉生》，台北：平裝本出版有限公司，2006年版