Music video for “You and Me”, the Beijing Olympics official theme song which was revealed at the opening ceremony on Friday night, sang by Chinese singer Liu Huan and British singer Sarah Brightman…
To be honest, the song is just ok. Liu Huan and Sarah Brightman did well, but the song doesn’t really appeal for me. I like the lyrics, but the music is too soft and lack the ‘wow’ factor.
i woke up early at 8am just to watch the ceremony live.
my whole family was awake watching it too.
i thought the art performers did great.
my parents kept on saying how amazing the performance was.
then it took so long for all the athletes to enter the stadium.
most of the countries’ political leaders were there, but i can’t believe the prime minister of my country (canada) didn’t attend.
when the US athletes entered, my dad told me that there was rumour saying that they would wear masks when they enter. thank god they didn’t.
china was last, but they caught the biggest attention with yao ming and the most people.
i thought the themesong was pretty, but sounded more like a lullaby. sarah brightman looked gorgeous. but i think liu huan looked a bit casual for the event.
Hello,
thank you for posting such a wonderful video.
Actually this song fits well with the overall theme.
Zhang Yimou makes the whole event looks “ying”, which portray children innocent dream.
That is why is sounds like gentle lulluby, and sarah’s child like angel voice fits well into this theme. This ying theme is a surprise sing typically olympic theme is very grand . Yi mou goes the other way round and make things ying, very dream like.
Sarah can sing with many set of voices, masculine, pop,soprano and so on. Her first olympic song in Barcelona reaches soprano and the song is powerful. This time she use different style. She picked the right voice.
My only complain is that liu huan’s attire is not approriate for theh occasion.
see you around :)
I gotta agree with YeinJee. No wow factor. I clicked off about the middle. Got tired of just seeing faces and bubbles flashing across the screen. Not much really said olympics to me either. All in all a little boring for me.
Also, without the subtitles, honestly, I wouldn’t have really been able to understand what Sarah was singing.
referring to the actual day presentation… i think the chinese singer was really under-dressed. even that, it’s an understatement.
The funny thing is that’s Liu Huan’s trademark attire; he’s always wearing a black T-shirt and pants in his performances.
Agreed, Sarah Brightman was amazing.
I am just thinking, 10 or 20 years from now, (set aside the Chinese) people will forget about this song. It’s not a bad song, but not really good either.
About Liu Huan’s attire… he was definitely under-dressed. That was his signature-costume though; as far as I could remember, he always wear jeans and a black T-shirt during his performance.
Edit: Jen was two minutes faster than me with Liu Huan’s trademark :p
@Yein Jee
It is hard to say if people will forget this song 20 years later, because this song is also under the supervision of Zhang Yimou, who is good at making artworks that let people remember it for many years to come.
He once said, he used bright colors in HERO so that people will remember the scenes for many many years.
I believe he has planned the same for this song. It stands out from other Olympics song like Amigo Para Siempre. It is a chidren dream’s song. People who feel and connect to this song will move to tears. Even sarah moved to tears by this song.
i couldn’t really hear any of the lyrics when i was watching it yesterday on tv.
ai.. the song is nice, but maybe not suitable for the olympic. sarah brightman was really good at last night performance, she touch the audience immediately when she open her voice, very cool.
I do not find the song as a whole nice and memorable. The melody was fine but it lacks good harmonies to accompany the melody being sung. In music writing a good piece of music has tension and resolution in it’s harmony, in order to make it into a memorable melody. Good harmonies can be orchestrated simple too, if the artistic director wishes that the music accompanying the melody be sparsely orchestrated. The two singers were fine in singing the song.
Relax… we’ll have to wait until 20 years later to draw the conclusion lol.
I just felt that non-Chinese won’t be connected to the song as much… the Chinese might still love the song 20 or 50 years later because of the emotion and memories… but westerners would probably forget about it months after the Beijing Olympics.
Emilie… I agree. I was actually a bit confuse if she was singing English or Chinese at some parts of the song… great voice though.
Dragon… I’m not thinking as much… just a direct feeling that the song is not good enough.
Wow i love the song. i thought it was great, yet it was kind of weird.
thats my opinion. I was so excited to see lots of country! I was more interested in the asian country..
When china came in i was like yeah! Yao Ming and the little boy was so cute!
really i don’t like the song,i love Sarah,but she didn’t performed better than before.
the song is too too soft,and the most important,it’s very short.
the melody is just so so.
i support the song “forever firends”,it may be more suitable for the Theme of Olympic Games.
我是中国人，我不喜欢这首歌，好听但不适合作奥运歌曲
this song is composed based on the traditional ancient chinese music,which usually
only use 5 notes( that is do re mi sol la)with the history of at least 2000 years.thus this music sounds simple,but sounds harmonious like people in the universe .
china’s ancient philosophy is harmony and people in the world should give rein to nature.
china people’s goal is harmonious earth ,that is the chinese character of “和”,which
was shown in the open ceremony in august 8,2008.
I’m a Chinese. As kyon said, I insist the song itself is really wonderful , peaceful, gentle, soft, touching……But it seems like it doesn’t suitable for the olympic.
Liu Huan is a respectable artist in China, the same as Sarah in England. They are both did a very good job!
Since you all love the art perfomance very much, I’m so glad.It’s so great! That means we didn’t waste more than 40 billion dollars~~
大家好，，这首歌 实在让人失望啊！！
路过 打下酱油 打酱油
China Charlie… thanks for the note. I won’t deny how sophisticated the song is, which is a good thing from artistic point of view. Question is, how many people could understand and appreciate the song?
Music is something about aesthetic… it should be a straight forward like or dislike and requires no explanations.
Beatrix… honestly, not all people are in love with the opening ceremony or the song; but overall you can be proud for being a Chinese… the event is so far so good.
打酱油 < 什么意思？
the 5 tone sclew “do re mi so la” is called pentatonic scale.
打酱油—中国时下流行网络语.意思是,正好”去买酱油”而路过这里的网友.
Thanks for the note Relax, and thanks for the explanation Charlie.
Judging various people’s comments seems to be your fun, Hah, Yein Jee? Or Mr. Wise?
Miranda… I am not trying to be wise… just emphasising my thoughts.
And I am not here to judge the comments; this is my blog and I think it’s a polite thing to reply to comments whether I am agreeing with it or not.
There are cases where I agree with the comments, and obviously there are times when I don’t.
Sorry, it supposes to be Mr. Polite.
Whatever… I am not expecting everyone to like me or for whatever I’ve said and done. Some people like it, some don’t, and some will hate it to the core… it’s a fact of life my dear.
fact of life? i think you mean its a common sense, right?
i just hope one day olympic Games will be held in Malaysia. i believe that OG would be exactly special.
Whatever.
丝竹、声肉，皆美之。
舞袂，远看，美；近看，微笑。
既得，何以庸哉？既为，何以伐为？所谓：知之为知之，不知为不知，是知也。
i’m a chinese.
i’m proud of my country.
although China did something wrong，i love my country all the same.
Welcome to china .welcome to nanjing!
The cermony was awsome but a bit boring. It took ages for Australia to come out though. Boooooooooooooring!!!!!!
Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi
Titan… no worries, China will see more visitors year by year. I am sure Nanjing will become one of the major tourism cities.
Aussie… well, the parade can’t be help… we have 200+ countries coming in, and I think the organisers did their best in this case to make the flow as smooth as possible.
Yeah, it was great seeing Sarah and she was beautiful! I was confused whether Sarah was singing in Mandarin Chinese or in English. The song is very pretty but if it was sung louder. The ceremony was awesome and I’m still learning and loving the Chinese culture.
[...] “You and Me” the official theme song, there are a dozen of two other theme songs that are endorsed by the [...]
The Openning ceremony is exciting, but I guess I got used to Zhang Yimo’s massive scale. Thought I felt it is a bit Chauvinistic . But this song is awe-inspiring. I was instantly touched .I guess after many years , I would only remember that moment. I just wish I could be there at that time, It will be a memory for life.
i think this song fits the olympics perfectly. the melody was played over and over again on the nbc channel in america. it’s a song with a meaning of unity of all the nations coming together to compete peacefully. not only nations coming unifying together but every race sharing this event as a family. it’s perfect. way better than lots of other songs in previous olympics like gloria estefan and etc. awesome olympics. it serves as an exemplary of what every future olympics should be.