Nicholas Tse is too depressing for mainland youth

Nicholas Tse’s new album, Forget Me Not (毋忘我), arrived on the mainland just before the October holiday. It’s a “best-of” collection, mostly of songs he wrote for other pop stars and which he’s now making his own. Fans eagerly anticipating the new title song will have to look elsewhere, however, since it’s not on the record – the censors at SARFT felt that it was too tragic for listeners here.

This is not really news – back in June when the single was sent to radio stations, it never cleared the censors, who apparently were tripped up by the line, “Since my youth I’ve had a feeling that I’ll die young” (我自幼直觉便是很早死). At the time, Nic said, “At first, my manager Mani wouldn’t let me sing it and opposed the use of those lyrics. But I insisted on singing it, even if it would get banned on the mainland.”

The press is reporting on the ban this week because Cecilia Cheung’s new husband was in town to promote the album, and the wedding stuff is apparently played out. In a recent interview, Nicholas elaborated on the circumstances of the ban:

Q: Does the name of this album, “Forget Me Not”, have any special meaning?

A: “Forget Me Not” is one of the songs on the album, and many of the ideas in it are my own deep feelings. I had hoped that this song would allow more people to understand Nicholas Tse, so I chose that name for the album.

Q: Reportedly, this song has been banned on the mainland, so your mainland fans may not be able to hear it?

A: Yes, this song didn’t pass. When I recorded it I already had a feeling that it wouldn’t pass; frankly, in seven years I haven’t recorded a song that brought me to tears while recording, but “Forget Me Not” had me crying while I was singing. Things are always like this – your greatest hopes become the biggest disappointment….

It may express his innermost feelings, but the lyrics are actually by hit machine Lin Xi. The music is based on “Forget Me Not” by Yutaka Ozaki, a Japanese singer who died in 1992 at just 26 years of age.

Nicholas Tse identifies the Japanese song as a major influence on his career, and he sings a tribute version of the original on the Hong Kong edition of his new album. Mainland fans are simply out of luck.