Zhou Shen’s Road to Success

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From: www.weibo.com/u/1736988591

By : Nicole Ashley Tan

Zhou Shen, also known as Charlie Zhou is a Chinese singer known for his heavenly voice and wide vocal range. Zhou Shen was born on 29 September 1992 in Shaoyang,Hunan,China. Also, Zhou Shen’s voice is not like other male singers, he has a high-pitched voice that is often mistaken as a female voice. His journey to fame is one not merely of talent but with self-acceptance, persistent, and the part of him that was once doubted as his weakness became his greatest strength.

Zhou Shen’s current popularity is the result of his hard work over the years. Zhou Shen’s parents are always at work because his family's financial situation was quite bad when he was born in the little mountain village of Shaoyang. This situation led to Zhou Shen and his older sister often being left alone at home by their parents. He needed to do most of the housework like farm and cook. Until his family moved into one of the greatest cities in Guiyang, he started to experience childhood. Before entering puberty, Zhou Shen’s voice seemed normal because people around him had similar voice and he loved to sing and was a happy child. He only started to feel insecure when the voice of other boys started to grow lower meanwhile his voice was still the same. Since then, Zhou Shen chose to hide his voice as much as possible. Even after the beginning of his senior year of high school and after winning a lot of singing competitions, he was still not confident and terrified to consider singing as his career. 

 After graduating from high school, under his parent’s insistence he went to Ukraine to study dentistry, following a more stable career path. But after thinking for a long time, he realized that dentistry was not his thing so he decided to switch from dentistry into music and enrolled in Lviv National Conservatory to study Bel Canto singing. Zhou Shen decided to become an internet singer on a channel named YY singing channel. He liked it not just because he loved singing, but because he could stay anonymous. No one cared if he was a guy or a girl, people were just into his unique voice and appreciated him for who he was. He began expanding his fanbase by covering more than 500 popular songs with his network named Kabrat.

 Zhou Shen’s breakthrough started in 2014 when he participated in a singing competition show. A singing competition show frequently pays attention to online singers with a big fanbase. The director of a singing competition called “The Voice of China” noticed Zhou Shen and wanted to invite Zhou Shen. Unfortunately, Zhou Shen declined the invitation twice because he was scared about criticism from the public. But, the director of the show invited Zhou Shen again for the third season of the show. This time he accepted the invitation after considering it for a while and he was still wondering why other people kept advancing his ambition while he was being held back due to his lack of confidence. Zhou Shen performed a song called “Huan Yan”, his voice immediately drew attention and even though he did not win the competition and viewers. Soon after, before he went back to Ukraine to continue his study, Bel Canto. He performed at the Olympic Winter Games with the hit Disney song “Let It Go”, and Zhou Shen sang it in a unique way, he sang a multi-language version of “Let it go” and won the best new artist of ERC Chinese Top Ten Awards.

 After returning from Ukraine, Zhou Shen appeared on the music show Mask Singer in a dress and heels singing in a song, “Riding a White Horse”. Also, Zhou Shen released one of his most iconic songs, “Big Fish” which is a theme song for an animated film named Big Fish and Begonia. This song became viral not only because of his voice but also his ability to convey deep emotion through music. Big Fish is a song that changed Zhou Shen’s reputation as one of China’s most talented and emotionally expressive singers. Since then, Zhou Shen's popularity increased, he released many original soundtracks for TV dramas, variety shows, and films. He is capable to sing in multiple languages: Mandarin, English, Italian and Ukrainian. Zhou Shen also got many awards and nominations, he has performed on the biggest stage in China named CCTV Spring Festival Gala and other national events.