This is a submission from our friends over at EurasianSensation about Cheesy Ballads. In it, ES sheds light on the Asian infatuation with outdated music, slow love songs, and much more. We hope you enjoy it!
Cool people tend to like cool music – that is, music that is a little bit edgy, or totally fresh and new, or so obscure that most people would have never even heard of it. This general rule is observed by most races, yet Asian people defiantly reject this. Despite Asians’ natural inclination towards cutting-edge technology and cool gadgets, general principles of coolness in music tend not to apply to them. For the Asian, there is no musical form greater than the cheesy ballad.
This addiction towards overly sentimental, obvious and treacly mainstream pop is most obvious amongst Asian females. Yet Asian males display a surprising fascination with cheesy music, which is surprising because it contravenes another rule of musical taste – that males should like music that is tough, “hard” and macho. Young males of other races gravitate naturally towards such musical styles as gangsta rap, punk, death metal and hardcore techno, since it fulfils their need to rebel against society and prove that they are in no way soft and therefore unmanly. But not so for the young Asian male, who would much rather sing along to “I Want It That Way” (while everyone else seems to know that heterosexual males are not meant to be fans of the Backstreet Boys, Asians seem to have never got that memo).
The love for slow love songs coincides with that other great Asian passion, #8 karaoke. Despite the myriad of various styles of non-cheesy music from around the world, none of them are apparently compatible with the complicated electronics of a karaoke machine. Thus karaoke-going Asians can happily sing their way through an evening of cheesy ballad after cheesy ballad, safe in the knowledge they will be untroubled by songs with even a shred of street credibility.
It would be easy to imagine that only nerdy Asians would go weak for cheesy ballads, but research shows that this is not so. Asians, being naturally in touch with their inner nerd, have a soft spot for cheesy music no matter how outwardly cool they seem. From the most chic beret-wearing bohemian Asian to the most hardcore Asian gangbanger, all will passionately belt out an emotional Mariah Carey number if you get them into a karaoke bar. There are nomadic hunter-gatherers in the jungles of Malaysia who cannot read, write or speak English yet who can somehow sing every verse of “Everything I Do I Do It For You”. Even an Asian presidential candidate and accused war criminal like Indonesia’s General Wiranto can find the time to release an album of love songs. (BBC News)
Indeed, some clever white people have developed a talent for exploiting the Asian penchant for cheesy ballads and forged entire careers out of it. Thus Danish band Michael Learns to Rock, unheard of in the Western world, can regularly sell out stadiums every time they tour in Asia. Ageing pop artists like Air Supply can tour Asia regularly despite not having a hit in the West since the 80s.
So why do Asians favour the cheesy ballad? Some theorists relate this to the Racial Coolness Hierarchy (RCH). Since it is common knowledge that black people are the coolest race, white people tend to imitate black music and culture or adopt black music like rock n’ roll as their own, thus hoping to inherit some of the inherent coolness of black people. Asians on the other hand, having long being accustomed to being stereotyped as nerdy and uncool, subconsciously figure they have nothing to lose by professing their love of Celine Dion’s Greatest Hits.
Sometimes serious but mostly irreverent, Eurasian Sensation explores culture, race and global happenings from an Asian-Australian perspective; the things that make us different, the things that make us alike, the things that make us love and hate each other, and the things that make us say “What the F-?”
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10 responses so far ↓
1 New Gadgets | Featured Submission: Cheesy Ballads // Oct 1, 2009 at 3:17 pm
[...] Original post by Stuff Asian People Like [...]
2 Gaurav Ahuja // Oct 1, 2009 at 3:46 pm
It is only common knowledge that Blacks are the coolest race to some people in the West. I do not think people in India or China think this way. Also, it makes sense that people of Northeast Asian origin, who have their diaspora in many places such as southern China and southeastern Asia, are more feminine because of lower testosterone levels.
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3 Eurasian Sensation // Oct 1, 2009 at 5:09 pm
@ Gaurav, I don’t know about the “East Asians have low testosterone” thing. But given that China has 1.3 billion people and Indonesia has 230 million, and given the amount of freaky porn that comes out of Japan, I’d say the East Asian testosterone levels aren’t too bad.
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4 Flowers // Oct 5, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Nice blog with a nice video. I don’t believe on racial discrimination that is something created by human.
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5 lol // Oct 8, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Ah ah.. I’ve been browsing random articles on your site for the past thirty minutes and so much of it rings sadly true. I now feel less alone in my Asian-ness. But at the same time I don’t know if I’ve now becomes more or less of a person.
Anyways great blog d00d
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6 Chi // Oct 13, 2009 at 7:55 am
Hey LOL
If you feeling lonely try asian9.com. It’s 100% free asian dating. This site does make me feel lonely too.
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7 Peter // Nov 10, 2009 at 12:03 am
I observed a number of friends and tried to see a pattern in their taste for music. I came to the conclusion that people have a preference for music they “grew up” listening to. Basically when they first started to really listen to music, the kind of music that was popular around them or with their peers is what they will tend to enjoy listening to for the rest of their lives. My methods aren’t scientific and there will always be outliers, but I think my idea is about as close to the truth as anyone else’s.
When it comes to Asians’ preference for cheesy ballads. My thinking is that because other Asians listen to the same stuff and they all grow up listening to the same stuff, thus we all end up having the same taste. One way to test my idea is to find out what adopted Asian Americans enjoy listening to. If they still like cheesy ballads then its probably in the genes.
And yeah, I’m into cheesy ballads too.
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8 Peter // Nov 10, 2009 at 2:54 am
I like how you think, Peter. Mind including an email next post?
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9 Peter // Nov 11, 2009 at 12:51 am
This is a fun site.
BTW: IMO the age when most people really start to listen to music is in their early teens.
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10 Pat // Feb 6, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Peter that fact that you think that blacks are coolest race makes you the biggest nerd out there, why don’t you get a backbone dork and pull your nose out of their asses. Aspire to be more than a sheep just because some in society say it is so doesn’t mean you have to parrot it.
Use your head, it is common knowledge that black people are the most irritating people on the planet. They try so hard to be cool that a large majority of them achieve nothing in life, cool doesn’t pay the bills fool.
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