Hua Chenyu

Hua Chenyu (Chinese: 华晨宇; pinyin: Huá Chényǔ; born February 7, 1990), also known as HuaHua (Chinese: 花花), is a Chinese singer and songwriter. Hua is well known for his powerful vocals, dramatic stage performances and talents in composing. He is often recognized as one of the most influential singer-songwriters in China. His strong body language and singing style make him a luminous body on the stage. His voice is full of tension, the language of the whole body and the power of singing are perfectly matched, and the strength of the loud voice also has its layered sense. Hua Chenyu can control different singing styles, even if the same song, each singing can bring a different feeling to everyone. In addition, his ability to adapt and create can not be ignored, and various different genres are also readily available.

Hua became famous after winning the 2013 Super Boy singing contest which was produced by Hunan TV, China. He released his debut album Quasimodo's Gift in September 2014, whose sales volume had ranked Top 1 in the Jingdong Top 100 Annual Sales Chart (Music). His first personal branded concert, "Mars" Concert, was held in Beijing on September 6, 2014 even before his debut album was released. Over 10,000 tickets were sold out within two minutes, breaking several records and making him the first Mainland Chinese singer of his generation to hold concerts in a large arena. An additional concert on September 7 was then announced and sold out due to high demand. Since then, Hua has brought his "Mars" Concerts to cities in China every year. His second physical album Aliens was released in December 2015. Mars concert in 2016, He became the first Chinese singer with the first generation to hold a four-sided concert. On March 7, 2017, he released his third album H, which refers to his last name initial.On September 8 and 9, 2018, he performed in Bird Nest stadium in front of 90,000 audience each day, becoming the only Mainland Chinese singer performing in this venue successively. His single “I really want to love this world” went on sale digitally on December 4, 2019. It was purchased by more than 7 million users with sales over ¥63 millions ($9.3 millions) within six months. His fourth album “New World” went on sale in April 2020.

Early life

Hua Chenyu was born to a wealthy family on February 7, 1990, in the city of Shiyan, Hubei province, China. His parents divorced when he was 2 years old, and he lived with his father during his childhood, who remarried when he was 10 years old. He began playing the flute at the age of 6 and took piano lessons in the fifth grade when he realized playing the flute was not enough to express his music vision. He wrote his first song at the age of twelve after mastering piano.

After finishing middle school, he moved to Wuhan alone to attend the Fine Arts High School there. In 2010, he passed the college entrance examination and entered the Wuhan Conservatory of Music, where he studied pop music vocal performance and gained more stage experience as the vocalist of a college rock band, Conseer. During his time in the conservatory, he made definitive steps in order to start his musical career and began to be known at school.

Super Boy

In 2013, shortly before graduating from conservatory, Hua entered the casting for the Super Boy contest. During this show produced by Hunan TV, the young singer started his rise among the contestants. On his first appearance to the audience, he sang his original "Lyricless Song" that gave him the label of being like a "Martian" for his unique expression in the lyricless song. Two of the three judges considered him to be odd or crazy, but after the third judge Laurie Shang asked him a few questions and sang a lyricless duet with him on the spot, she exclaimed that "he is a genius!" because "he knew intuitively how to express emotions through music". Due to the recommendation of Laurie Shang and his other performance of "The Kill", he made it past the first round of audition. He later sang together with Laure Shang the song "The Star" in the final round on September 27, 2013, and Chenyu Hua eventually won the championship of 2013 "Super Boy".

After the competition, Hua was signed to EE-Media, the Mainland Chinese record label where the most of the Super Boy and Super Girl contestants are linked. His debut single "Me and Myself" was released in September 2013. Hua also took part in the Super Boy Tour with other contestants, in which they toured 11 major Chinese cities.

Career

2013–2014 First Mars Concert and debut album Quasimodo's Gift

Chenyu Hua went to Italy and Spain to film for the TVN reality show "Divas Hit the Road" in April 2014 and the show was broadcast from April 25. The first episode received the highest viewership within the same time period. This show, with its high popularity, attracted many attention to Hua. In June, he was invited by the popular Korean eyewear brand ALO as the first Chinese brand ambassador and went to Korea for the advertising photo shooting.

In less than a year since Hua's debut, he announced his first brand-named concert, Mars Concert in May 2014. On June 28, 2014, over 10,000 concert tickets were sold out within 1 minute 32 seconds for his first show on September 6. Due to the heated response, the organizers announced to hold an extra show on September 7. The press conference of the Mars Concert 2014 was held in Huiyuan Space of the Beijing Mastercard Center. This made him the first in the Chinese music industry to hold press conference in venue with capacity over a thousand.Hua's first solo concerts were held on September 6 and 7, 2014 at Beijing Mastercard Center (originally Beijing Wukesong Culture & Sports Center and currently LeSports Center). September 6 concert was unprecedentedly broadcast live through QQ Music and Hunantv, attracting more than 400,000 online viewers. Over 120,000 E-tickets were sold.

On the same day of his concert (September 6), the international jewelry brand, Pomellato, announced Chenyu Hua as the brand ambassador for the Dodo and Pomellato 67 series.

Not long after his concerts, Hua released his first solo album, Quasimodo's Gift in September 19, 2014 both in Mainland China and overseas. This atypical album has a variety of musical style, ranging from rock, indie and folk. Quasimodo's Gift does not feature songs with the theme of love and relationship like other mainstream pop songs do. Instead, it uses first-person perspective to describe the world as seen from the eyes of Hua. Hua composed three out of ten songs in this album, including the title song “Quasimodo's Gift”. The sense of loneliness but not sorrow fills up the whole album. According to Hua, the major theme of this album is to be "small": "At first I wanted to name it Size 40. 40 is my shoe size. I mean everyone doesn't need a vast space to live, as one only have a pair of feet of size 40, and just standing here is enough... Because as long as you are standing here, you exist, and have a value of existence." - Hua Chenyu. Later on November 11, the short film Quasimodo's Gift was released, with Hua being the main character. Two of his songs in this album, Quasimodo's Gift and Ashes from the Fireworks, were included in the film, merging the music into the story. The music videos of this two songs were also cut from this short film. The overseas version of this album ranked number one on the Taiwan Five Music Chart for several weeks. This album received several awards, including ERC Chinese Top Ten Awards for Best Album, Top Chinese Music Awards for 2014 Most Popular Album, Best Album Performance, and Best Album Production, Chinese Music Radio Awards for Best Composition, and Golden Song for Let You Go in this album. This album reached number 1 sales in Jingdong’s 2014 music sale chart.

In November, he was invited to the online variety show of Tencent, namely "Say Hi! The Hit of China" (Hi歌). In the programme, he chose to rearrange the song "Spring" and won the "Annual Hit Song of China" (年度Hi歌). On Christmas Eve, he sang "Shimmer" and "Quasimodo's Gift" with rearranged piano composition in pianist Langlang's Beijing concert.

2015 Second Album Aliens and Mars Concert

On January 1, 2015, Chenyu Hua for the first time joined and performed in the Liaoning TV New Year Gala.

On January 10, "Shimmer" was announced to be the interlude song of the Chinese TV drama "You Are My Sunshine" (何以笙箫默).

On February 8 (Los Angeles Time), Chenyu Hua was invited by Billboard as VIP spectator to the 57th Annual Grammy Awards. On February 17, Chenyu Hua performed in the Liaoning TV Chinese New Year Gala.

On April 27, Hua released his vocal experimental song "Cancer".

On the Forbes China Celebrity 100 announced on 11 May, Chenyu Hua was found on the chart for the first time with the integrated ranking of 91.

In early May, Hua's Mars Concert was announced to hold on August 1 in Shanghai. Almost 10,000 tickets were sold out within 35 seconds while over 160,000 people were online. This once again broke the online ticketing record in the Mainland. Due to the heated response, his company announced two extra shows at the same venue, on July 31 and August 2 respectively. It made him the first Mainland singer to hold concert for three consecutive nights in the same venue. His concert on August 1 was broadcast online through Tencent and HunanTV (芒果TV). The Tencent online audience reached 2.64 million. This also renewed the record for online concert real-time broadcast.

On September 27, Hua attended CCTV Mid Autumn Festival Gala and performed "Shimmer".

On October 28, his second album "Aliens" started pre-ordering on Jingdong. The limited 30,000 pieces almost sold out within a day. On November 7, his first digital album as well started pre-ordering. Within 8 minutes, over 100,000 pieces were sold. It has attained sale volume of 350,000 on the first day of sale. On December 18, "Aliens" was put on sale on overseas music platforms like iTunes while the overseas version of "Aliens" was also officially started selling on December 22. The promotional video of "Aliens" was aired on the LED screen at New York Time Square for a week starting from December 23. Hua composed 7 of the 11 songs, and for this album, he wanted to present himself as "big", "domineering", in contrast to his first album, This was also the first time he included rap songs in his album. This Album also won many awards, includingERC Chinese Top Ten Awards for Best Concept Album, Best Vocal Collaboration for Kings and Paupers, Top Chinese Music Awards for Best Album Performance, 2016 Ali Music Annual Awards for Best Pop Album, Most Popular Album, and Most Popular song for Mayfly.

On November 13, the first-ever Chinese production music study tour reality show which Chenyu Hua has joined, "Be the Idol" (唱游天下) by Jiangsu TV, was on air.

On New Year's Eve, Chenyu Hua for three consecutive years appeared in the Hunan TV New Year Countdown Concert.

2016 Tour Concerts, The Next

On January 8, Hua performed in "Langlang's Sky – Langlang and His Friends Spring Music Festival". The show was broadcast through Liaoning TV on February 1.

On February 8, he performed "For My Future Child" on Beijing TV Chinese New Year Gala.

On March 4, Chenyu Hua appeared as a guest on the variety show "Ace to Ace" (王牌对王牌) on ZhejiangTV. His rearrangement of the song "Boluo Boluo Mi" originally by Xie Na (菠萝菠萝蜜) gained widespread attention and positive comments.

On March 7, the interlude song "The Rampage" for the movie Who Sleeps My Bro was released.

On April 7, he released the song "Mars Intelligence Agency" which is the theme song for the online talk show with the same title.

On April 9, he participated in the 16th Annual Festival of Top Chinese Music as ambassador and received two awards: Annual Best Album Performance for his album Aliens and Annual Best Idol.

On July 8, Chenyu Hua's newly released song, "Here We Are", was announced to be the theme song for movie Line Walker (film) (使徒行者). Another self-composed song, "To Be Free", was released on August 3 and it is the promotional song for movie The Warriors Gate. On August 16, Chenyu Hua released his second English song For Forever. This song was specially created for the Mars Concert.

This year Hua chose to hold tour concerts in three cities: Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Beijing Concert was held on July 2 in The Cadillac Arena (originally Beijing Wukesong Culture & Sports Center). Shanghai Concerts were held on August 21 in Mercedes-Benz Arena. The finale of 2016 Mars Concert took place in Shenzhen Bay Sports Centre, with Khalil Fong as the special guest. The live online broadcast of the Shanghai and Shenzhen concerts, supported by LeEco, accumulated over 4.3 million viewers.

From October 2016 to January 2017, Hua participated as a celebrity mentor and judge in the first season of 天籁之战 (The Next) alongside Karen Mok, Fei Yu-Ching and Yang Kun. In this programme, aspiring singers have the opportunity to challenge a celebrity mentor. The celebrity mentor will then be assigned a song by the challenger and will only have 24 hours to prepare for the performance. Hua gained widespread recognition for his talent in rearrangement and performance, especially after his own arrangement of 我的滑板鞋 (My Skateboard Shoes), entitled 我的滑板鞋 2016, which later was put into his album H. Other performances where he won a majority of audience votes include 流浪记 (Wandering), 故乡的云 (Clouds of Hometown), Dear Friend, 齐天大圣 (Great Sage Equal to Heaven, translation may vary) and 易燃易爆炸 (Flammable and Explosive). Hua and contestant Juno Su performed 南屏晚钟 (Naping Evening Bells) in the semi-finals and 如果爱 (Perhaps Love) in the finals.

2017 Studying Abroad, TV Shows, Mars Concert

Right after filming The Next, Hua went to study in Berklee College of Music until end of March. He learned singing and rapping skills, but finding that many of the techniques suited English songs more than Chinese ones. The most useful thing he learned was how Pentatonic Scale was used in Western music (as it was also widely used in traditional Chinese music), and he would incorporate it in his own songs (e.g.his later rearrangement of Drinking Alone).

On June 3, Hua joined reality travel show Flowers on Trip (旅途的花样) along with Lin Chi-Ling, Zhang Xinyi, Aarif Rahman and others. They traveled to Morocco, Russia, Norway, and Denmark. Following the "One Belt, One Road" approach, the stars have brought the audience to experience the real exotic culture, and also brought Chinese culture to every journey.

Chenyu Hua was a judge on Tencent's new singing competition show The Coming One (明日之子), where his support for contestant Hez, a humanoid persona created using augmented reality and singing voice synthesizer technologies, sparked controversy on Chinese social media. The first episode of the show started live-streaming on June 10.

On July 13, Hua was announced brand ambassador of Estee Lauder China. On September 27, mobile MMO game Kings of Glory (王者荣耀) released theme song for game character Luban by Hua Chenyu.

2017 Mars Concert was held on October 13 and 14 in Beijing Cadillac Arena. This time, only one of the concert dates was broadcast live online and it alone gathered more than 4 million live viewers.

From October 2017 to January 2018, Hua continued his role as a celebrity mentor and judge in the second season of The Next alongside Karen Mok, Fei Yu-Ching, Yang Kun and Jason Zhang.

2018 The Singer, "Bird Nest" Mars Concert

In February 2018, Hua joined Singer 2018 (歌手2018) after turning the show down for three years, alongside Jessie J, Wang Feng, Tengger, Angela Chang, James Li, Juno Su, KZ Tandingan and more. His rearrangements have earned him rising popularity in China. During the show, he won the first place in four episodes, and his average percentage of votes ranked 2nd among all the previous contestants in the 6 seasons of Singer (and I Am a Singer before it re-branded). In the finale episode, Hua's performance of "Light Years Away"《光年之外》with G.E.M 邓紫棋 which brought him to Top Four together with Jessie J, Wang Feng and Tengger. His final performance of Angela Chang's song, "Shout"《呐喊》, earned him second place, after Jessie J. Chenyu Hua's performance of his self-written song “Heaven's Equal (齐天)” won Most Popular Song of the show.

That year, Hua composed for Karen Mok,the track "Halftime (we met here)" which is the title song of Karen's 16th album.

In May–September 2018, Chenyu Hua participated on Tencent's singing competition show "The Coming One 2" (明日之子 2)along with Chris Lee(李宇春), Wu Tsing Fong (吳青峰) and Yang Mi (杨幂) as the mentor for vocal track (魔音赛道).

On September 8, 2018, and September 9, 2018 Chenyu Hua had his 2018 Mars Concert in Beijing National Stadium ("Bird Nest") on his fifth year anniversary since debuting. The tickets were once again sold out within one minute. This made him the first post-90s idol in mainland china to hold a concert in the National stadium ("Bird Nest") with 90,000 audiences.

On December 12, Hua won Musician of the Year at Harper's BAZAAR 2018 Men of the Year awards and Most Searched Across Asia at 2018 Yahoo Asia Buzz Awards.

2019 Variety shows, 5 new songs for the 4th album, 2019 Mars Concert

On January 1, "Hua Chenyu Studio Official" posted its first weibo, signified the first appearance of Hua's own studio. The studio is still under EE-Media, but operates independently.

On January 5, it was announced that Hua Chenyu would take part in ZheJiangTV's variety show "Ace to Ace S4" (王牌对王牌 第四季), being one of the host group "Ace Family", which included Shen Teng, Jia Ling, Guan Xiaotong.

On January 13, Hua Chenyu collaborated with artist and choreographer Shen Wei to perform a show, 声希 (Folding), in Yin 2019 Nanjing Pop-Music Concert (烎2019南京潮音發布夜).

On 21 May, Hua Chenyu announced that 2019 Mars Concert would be held on November 2 in Shenzhen Baoan Stadium.

On August 20, Hua Chenyu was ranked 33th on Forbes China Celebrity 100 in 2019.

On October 22, owing to unavoidable issues, the concerts originally arranged to be in Shenzhen were cancelled. However, Hua Chenyu also announced that he would try hard to arrange the other available stadium and schedule for 2019 Mars Concert as soon as possible to fulfill the promise between his fans and himself.

On October 27, Hua Chenyu announced that 2019 Mars Concert was rescheduled to November 15–17 for 3 days at Haikou Wuyuanhe stadium in Hainan, China.

On October 28, "Conversation with ET", which was written by Hua Chenyu, cooperating with ET, was published on NetEase Cloud Music. ("ET" is the name of his fans.)

On November 11, the music video of "Conversation with ET" was published.

On November 15–17, "Hua Chenyu 2019 Mars concert" was held at Haikou Wuyuanhe stadium in Hainan, China. Simultaneously, he revealed and sang 5 new songs composed by himself, including "I want to love this world", "Madhouse", "Conversations with ET", "God Tree", and "Seven Personalities".

On December 4, "I want to love this world" composed by Hua Chenyu was exclusively published on NetEase Cloud Music. He wrote the song for people who are suffering from depression and also encouraged everyone not to ignore the serious influence of depression.

2020: The 4th Album "New World", Returning to Singer

On January 1, 2020, Hua Chenyu was the first one who performed on the concert of HunanTV 2019-2020 New Year's Eve gala after 12 midnight. His airtime saw the TV ratings for HunanTV got to 2.7% while the market share of it has reached up to 30.85%.

On January 3, 2020, Hua Chenyu was announced as one of the four returning singers from the fourth to sixth season to participate in Singer 2020, entitled Year of the Hits (歌手·当打之年), making it the second season to feature returning singers since 2017. He won the competition on the live finale aired April 24, making Hua the first returning singer who is not an entirely new participating singer to win I Am a Singer.

On May 3rd, the Music Video of BULLFIGHT was revealed, which took 6 months long to be finished. Hua invited and cooperated with the famous Japanese director, Mitsunori Yokobori, and his team to create this video, which combined the special effects of CG and Animation.

Albums

Singles

• 6th Top Chinese Music Chart Break-Through New Artist Award – "Most Popular Male Singer"(2013)
• 2013 Weibo Awards Ceremony – "Stars of the Year"
• 21st ERC Chinese Top Ten Awards – "Best New Singer" (2014)
• 15th Chinese Music Media Award – "Most Notable Male Singer"(2014)
• 2014 Weibo Awards Ceremony – "Spotlight of the Year"
• 22nd ERC Chinese Top Ten Awards – "Best Album Performance", "Most Popular Album", "Best Album Production", "People's Choice – Male Singer" (2015)
• 15th Top Chinese Music Awards – "Most Popular Male Singer (Mainland)", "Best Album (Mainland) – Quasimodo's Gift" (2015)
• Chinese Music Radio Awards – "Most Popular New Artist", "Golden Songs – Let You Go", "Best Composer – Quasimodo's Gift" (2015)
• 2015 Weibo Awards Ceremony – "Most Popular Male Musician", "Freshasia Music 2015 Most Wins"
• 2016 Ali Music Annual Awards – "Most Popular Artist of the Year, "Most Popular Album of the Year – Aliens", "Most Popular Song of the Year – Mayfly", "Pop Album of the Year (Mandarin) – Aliens"
• 23nd ERC Chinese Top Ten Awards – "Best Concept Album", "Best Vocal Collaboration – Kings and Paupers", "Media Recommendation", "People's Choice – Male Singer" (2016)
• 2016 KU Music Asian Music Awards – "Album of the Year", "Most Influential Singer of the Year"
• 16th Top Chinese Music Awards – "Best Album – Aliens" (2016)
• 2016 LeEco Night Awards – "Most Popular Singer"
• 2016 Freshasia Music Awards – "Best Male Singer"
• 18th Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA) – "Best Asian Artist – China" (2016)
• 2016 Netease Attitude Awards – "Musician with Attitude"
• 24th ERC Chinese Top Ten Awards – "Best Adapted Song – My Skateboard Shoes 2016"
• 2017 Tencent Video Cstar Awards – "VIP's Choice – Best Singer"
• 2018 iQiyi All-Star Carnival – "Best Male Singer"
• 2018 Harper's BAZAAR 2018 Men of the Year awards - Musician of the Year
• 2018 Yahoo Asia Buzz Awards - Most Searched Across Asia