As the performance of the song was the first time for young musicians to make their voices in officially proved public stage in China, the senior administrators in the China Audio and Video Head Office reminded the composition team about the political sensitivity of this song, mentioning that it would be censored by state cultural officers in advance of the performance. To address such an underpinned political line, the song adopts the theme of “love” to be accepted by both an older generation who stood in a dominant political position and a younger generation eager to speak out their real feelings. The theme of “love” acted as the cohesive force for them all, although they may have had different understandings and interpretations of the term “love” itself. For the middle-aged generation during the decade, the concept of “love” was usually directed towards the Communist Party, the nation, or one’s career aspirations, and treated mainly as a kind of lofty “love”. The young musicians, meanwhile, were pursuing a kind of general “love” among human beings, including mutual love, care, trust, and help. Moreover, the “love” they envisaged also extends to the celebration of self-identity and the value of the individual, both of which notions had suffered long oppression and alienation.

Another cohesive power of the song among the two generations was the combination of individual and collective ideologies. Reviewing the lyrics shows this fusion of individualism (“I”, “my”, “your”, “you”, and “he”) and collectivism (“we”, “share”, and “world” appear frequently). Moreover, even the singular terms can be interpreted as referring to the whole generation rather than to just one person or group. Hearing the lyrics this way draws on a point made by two Western scholars in their analyses of Cui Jian’s “I Have Nothing”. In his analysis, Andrew Jones argues that, “The singer’s ‘I’ becomesour ‘I’, and then merges with a collective ‘we”’ (1992: 138). Timothy Brace also suggests substituting the words “We have nothing” for “I have nothing” at each occurrence as the title describes “the feeling of today’s Chinese youth” (1991: 63, 54). Noting this way of listening links songs like “I Have Nothing” and “Fill the World with Love” to an ideology already apparent in revolutionary songs: the leftist song writers of the 1930s “almost invariably chose to write of the struggles of workers, oppressed women, and exploited children in terms of a collective ‘we”’ (Jones, 2001: 123).

The first live performance of the song in Beijing Worker’s Stadium also suggests such an incorporation of individualism and collectivism. Given chance to show their personal styles, singers were arranged to sing line-by-line in turn in the verses of Parts I and III. The different vocal styles can be heard in these solos, including rough Western rock, sweet folk song, and typical pop. They were arranged seemingly randomly on the stage rather than in a neat line or in clear order. Some had the most fashionable hairstyles at that time and some wore sunglasses. After every such short solo, the live audience of over 10,000 warmly cheered.²³ To build a collective identity, all the singers wore identical jackets, males in yellow and females in pink, with a “united” T-shirt underneath. In the chorus, the singers downplayed their personal styles to produce a blended, harmonious sound. The male performers stood shoulder to shoulder and the female performers held hands with each other. Most of them lifted their arms together at the end.

“Fills the World with Love” sets a start to a new genre of public welfare songs, one that addresses the goodwill of the general people towards rebuilding shared ethical values and spiritual needs. Similar songs afterwards include “The Devotion of Love” (Ai de fengxian ),²⁴“Longing” (Kewang ),²⁵ and “Peace be with You” (Zhu ni ping’an ).²⁶