Beijing 2022 Olympics official theme song ‘Join Us in Winter’, featuring patriotic rap group CD Rev, splits opinion – is it catchy or cringe?
- Song also features actor and singer Zeng Shunxi, and Xinhua journalist and internet celebrity Lu Binqi
- Twitter users mock ‘embarrassing’ music video, while fans on Weibo praise its melody
The reviews are in for China’s new English-language theme song for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics – and it’s fair to say opinion is split.
Some on Twitter are calling the music video for Join Us in Winter “embarrassing”, while others on Weibo have given it props for its catchy melody.
Chinese social media users – and fans of its artists, which include actor and singer Zeng Shunxi, and patriotic rap group CD Rev – praised the song for its “youthfulness”.
People outside China’s Great Firewall, however, were more far more critical of the tune, mocking its clumsy lyrics and awkward style, while seizing the chance to criticise China’s human rights record.
China is keen to use the Winter Games, held from February 4 to 20, as a platform to showcase its development and unite its people.
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The state-run Xinhua news agency published the Join Us in Winter music video on its Weibo account on Wednesday. The song also features Lu Binqi, a Xinhua journalist and internet celebrity.
“Looking forward to a land of ice and snow, we dream to see the graceful Great Wall,” Zeng sings in the first verse, over digitally enhanced footage of snow-capped mountains.
“Come on, keep on trying, time for us to shine in the show,” Lu adds. “Hello, hello!” they then sing in unison against slow-motion footage of some snowboarders.
Join Us in Winter is among the handful of Beijing 2022 theme songs written and performed in English. A Weibo post of the video has already been shared more than 33,000 times, and attracted more than 15,000 likes.
“The music is very good!! I look forward to the Winter Olympics! Go, Olympic athletes!,” one Weibo user wrote, tagging Zeng’s account like many other positive comments.
Although the song is targeting an audience outside China, it has garnered just 3,800 views on YouTube. It has been viewed more than 21,000 times on Twitter in a post made by the Global Times, the tabloid arm of the People’s Daily.
“Skis are flying, what a backflip, somebody’s dancing on the ice, it’s figure skating,” hip-hop group CD Rev – also known as Chengdu Revolution – add in the song’s bridge.
The Sichuan-based quartet is known for making nationalistic music, and found fame in 2017 after releasing No Thaad, a song that voiced China’s opposition to the installation of the anti-ballistic missile system in South Korea.
The group’s 2020 single I Can’t Breathe took aim at the Black Lives Matter movement, which China often refers to, to deflect criticisms from the United States over its human rights record.
“Go, go on, we’re never gonna stop, snow will never melt our spirit, race for the top,” the group continues as it tells listeners to join the Games – despite the fact spectators are banned.
Christina Scott, the deputy head of mission at the British embassy in Beijing, said her “informal advice” for British winter sports fans was to “stay on your sofa”.
“‘Come join us’ … but they haven’t agreed to direct commercial flights, there’s three weeks enforced state quarantine on arrival, and tickets aren’t on sale to the public anyway,” Scott said in a Twitter post.
One YouTube user went so far as to call the lyrics awkward.
“The Great Wall is not ‘graceful’. If you are writing an English song, you should find a native speaker to proofread the lyrics. I don’t think that’s beyond the budget of whoever is behind this song,” they wrote.
Join Us in Winter was produced by Xinhua’s multimedia branch and the state-owned China Record Group, under the supervision of the Communist Party’s internet regulator, a description on Chinese music streaming platform QQ Music said.
Beijing 2022 organisers have also produced a multilingual version of the main theme song, Together for a Shared Future, which features the voices of singers from different countries as well as journalists of CGTN, China’s state-run multilingual network.
