Chapter 60: A Good Song Is Never Too Late

If we are talking about who Wei Yu offended the most severely since he started scoring, it was definitely the gold-medal producer Ding Ang. The other times he left ratings, it was either for television programs or internet shows, and his wording was relatively restrained.

Only in Ding Ang’s case was he scored publicly at an awards ceremony, losing face in front of countless industry bigwigs. Given his personality, there was simply no way he would let the matter rest.

Hearing that Wei Yu planned to release an album, Ding Ang could no longer sit still. Singles were just minor trifles; song streaming data and charts could be manipulated by fans buying streams and flooding the metrics, but album sales were not so easily faked.

An album's metrics were a true measure of a musician's status. Once Wei Yu came out with a masterpiece of an album that could actually stand up to scrutiny, the nature of the situation would completely change...

He had to intercept it. He absolutely had to intercept it. Even if he couldn't win, he had to severely dent the sales of Wei Yu's album. To drag him down into the mud, he was willing to pay a certain price.

"How is it that writing web novels about villains always brings this strange kind of thrill..."

Yu Wei felt like he was simply born to be a small-fry villain. Standing there with an evil grin, letting out a signature cackle, wasn't that infinitely more fun than playing the long game with forbearance?

Unfortunately, it was very rare for albums to go head-to-head in a chart battle these days. Ever since the advent of the short-video era, hardly any singers released actual albums anymore, let alone crashing into each other's release windows.

To borrow novel terminology, this was the apocalyptic era for albums. Making an album required massive resources, with a production cycle stretching across months or even years, and there was no guarantee it would even break even. With all that grueling effort for so little reward, naturally very few people were willing to do it.

Even if someone did, it was basically just a gimmick built around fan economics; it was practically impossible to produce a true, culture-shaping masterpiece like the ones from the old days.

For Yu Wei, however, the cost was minimal. All he needed was active readership. As long as his readers came through for him, he could conjure up an entire encyclopedia of music.

"An album needs at least ten songs, right?"

He wondered how the system would calculate the readership metrics if he suddenly wrote a dozen songs all at once. Hopefully, it wouldn't inflate his rewards tenfold...

Before publishing the new chapter, Yu Wei deliberately added a concluding note: "Red Bean will be online tonight at midnight. Everyone is welcome to go listen."

Compared to promotions by entertainment companies and music platforms, Yu Wei still trusted his own promotion within his book the most. After all, the people reading the novel were active fans.

This song had finally been squeezed out. As for his other tracks, they had either been sung on variety shows, performed during livestreams, or at least attached to a short video; "Red Bean" was the only one being released through the normal, proper process.

Apart from the title and the theme, netizens knew almost nothing about the track. That was precisely the effect Yu Wei wanted. Unlike the noisy environment of variety shows and livestreams, "Red Bean" was best savored slowly with a pair of headphones on.

Whether in terms of lyrical and melodic composition, artistic value, or critical acclaim, this song was an undisputed top-tier work. A good song was never too late to arrive.

"An album! Yay! But what is 'Red Bean'?"

"Author, you dog, look at the mess you've made! It's been so long that everyone almost forgot about this song!"

"I've got no money for a music platform subscription. Big Mushroom, Venmo me nine-ninety-nine."

"You're right, but I still don't know what 'Red Bean' has to do with a color, even though that song 'Crimson' didn't have anything to do with colors either."

"I'm an Aidan fan, and if this song isn't as good as 'Crimson', I'm coming after you!"

Even though the wording was a bit extreme, it was clear that everyone was still looking forward to the new song. Yu Wei scrolled through the chapter comments and began preparing for his debut album.

On the new song charts at the beginning of the month, there wasn't a single strong contender in sight. When people looked back, last month's chart-topper was Yu Wei, and the month before that was also Yu Wei.

Without any unexpected twists, this month would likely be him again, especially since he still owed more than a few songs. The official versions of "The Nameless" and "The Thief of Years" hadn't been released yet, and just a couple of days ago, another completely baffling track titled "Riding the Waves" had popped up.

Ordinary netizens might not have understood what was going on, but seasoned veterans of web novels already caught on. This continuous stream of excellent works by Yu Wei clearly meant one thing—he had a backlog of chapters... no, a backlog of songs!

They had every reason to suspect that these songs had all been written during Yu Wei's years of obscurity, and he was just waiting to dump them all at once in a massive update frenzy, following the exact same playbook as web novel authors.

That night, they clicked on the freshly baked "Red Bean," but instead of Yu Wei's familiar, bright vocal timbre, they were greeted by a slightly husky voice, the tails of his notes carrying an almost imperceptible tremble.

"We haven't even properly felt
The season when snowflakes bloom
Shivering together will help us understand better
What gentleness really is."

Was this really sung by Yu Wei?

Everyone looked back at the credits list in sheer disbelief. The performer, lyricist, and composer were undeniably Yu Wei, but the vocal technique was clearly a deliberate choice on his part.

Yu Wei had recorded this song more than twenty times, right until his throat was hoarse, before he finally captured that authentic, lonely humming feel reminiscent of Khalil Fong.

Right from the very opening, this was something "Crimson" could never hope to compete with. Yu Wei's vocal delivery was as soft as a whisper, accompanied by jazzy fingerpicked guitar arpeggios, exuding a sense of melancholy while carrying a tender nostalgia for the past.

Compared to baseless, melodramatic heartache, this sense of layering made it very easy for listeners to immerse themselves, especially in the dead of night.

They say red beans symbolize lovesickness, but in this song "Red Bean," the red bean served as a metaphor for the impermanence of love.

"Sometimes, sometimes
I believe that everything has an end
comings and goings both have their time
Nothing lasts forever."

Netizens familiar with Yu Wei could tell right away that this was his most restrained vocal performance yet. His technique was restrained, yet it struck straight at the heart.

These lines revealed the essence of how all things change, perfectly capturing the agony after the shattering of romantic illusions. If "Crimson" was the hysterical crying after a breakup, this song was an exploration of the very nature of love itself.

A master is a master; this gap in quality was truly immense.

Using the imagery of the red bean to subtly mirror the sense of estrangement in an intimate relationship, laying bare the eternal contradiction between freedom and restraint in love—this was content rarely found in other love songs.

There was simply no comparison. By the time they heard this part, they had completely forgotten about the plot point in the novel where the two songs were competing, leaving only pure appreciation for the music.

Actually, Yu Wei's previous song "The Nameless" had still drawn skepticism from quite a few people because it relied very little on vocal acrobatics, focusing instead on emotional resonance. If you couldn't bridge the emotional gap, naturally you wouldn't be able to get into it.

It was an industry-acknowledged fact that many singer-songwriters had average vocal abilities; after all, it wasn't easy to simultaneously master both the brain and the vocal cords.

But this song, "Red Bean," was different. Whether in terms of technique or emotion, it belonged squarely in the top tier. Even if someone failed to resonate with it emotionally, it was hard not to recognize its brilliance.

It was as if Yu Wei had calculated everyone's critiques of him and deliberately flexed his vocal prowess to perfection. Wasn't this clearly done on purpose?

Originally, people had only suspected that Yu Wei had a stash of unreleased songs, but after listening to this track, that suspicion turned almost into absolute certainty.

This guy definitely stockpiled a bunch of tracks, treating them like playing cards, throwing them out according to the online climate—first dropping a preventive hint in his novel, and then making his move.

True to form for a book author, he really knew how to play the pig to eat the tiger.

"Stop hoarding them! You keep tossing them out one by one and it's driving me crazy! Can't you just release the whole backlog at once?"

"Chen Chen was right. Thank goodness he surrendered and knelt down quickly, otherwise he'd have been beaten to dust by this song."

"Big Mushroom, have you really never been in a relationship? Every single love song you write is more bone-deep than the last!"

"This book doesn't even have a female lead. Do you really think he looks like someone who's ever been in love?"

Yu Wei pretended not to see the comments begging for more chapters and songs, but as for the complaints about there being no female lead, he felt he had to address that. Plotlines involving scoring ratings and bombarding the entertainment industry carried too much bitterness and hostility; adding a female lead would make the story feel fractured.

You had to make compromises where necessary; making Wei Yu suffer a little bit wasn't a problem...

The readers' discussions continued, but gradually, the topic drifted off course. A reader from a province known for fiercely competitive civil service examinations was the first to point out:

"This is the contradiction between the growing demand of readers for literary and entertainment works and the lagging output of novel updates. As long as the novel updates its songs slowly, Yu Wei won't be releasing songs quickly either."

To put it bluntly, there were definitely far more people who wanted to hear songs than people seriously reading Yu Wei's book. A failing book—nobody cared about it; everyone just wanted the music.

However, as long as Yu Wei kept writing chapters, he would release songs according to the novel's pacing, and writing chapters took up the time he could have spent making music.

What could be done about this? The solution was simple: as long as Yu Wei stopped writing books, wouldn't he have more time and energy to put out songs?

"Brothers, go click report so Yu Wei can focus on making music in peace."