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