Check your iPod before you get ready to party: it may contained banned songs if you’re a fan of artists including In 3 (阴三儿), MC Hotdog, or Xinjiekou.
China’s Ministry of Culture on Monday published a blacklist (the Ministry uses that phrase in their own headline) of 120 songs that they believes “harm public morality.”
“[Internet music networks] were found to promote music products containing pornography, violence, or to have content that harms the public morality and abet crime,” the Ministry said in its statement. The 120 songs will be banned from online music platforms such as QQ Music, and should also be removed from KTV song lists. The announcement did not state specifically whether the artists themselves would be punished or performances by them proscribed in any way.
The list names numerous songs by hip-hop artists, but that is not the only genre represented on the list. Surprisingly, all of the songs are in Chinese, by Chinese artists, although at least two of the artists named on the list are from Taiwan. Similarly eyebrow-raising is the appearance of 90s Taiwan rocker Chang Chen-yue, whose milquetoast music wouldn’t seem to warrant five entries on the blacklist, including one collaboration with MC Hotdog. And yet here we are.
Anyway, now we know what the 120 most popular songs of the year are going to be.
More stories by this author here.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @greatwriteshark
Weibo: @SinoScuba潜水
Photo: 邱鈺鋒/Wikimedia