天使之路
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Elliot James Reay could have copied every other Western act and sung a Taylor Swift cover. Instead, he took 1950s rock'n'roll to a live TV show where autotune is switched off and discovered a version of fame that Britain has forgotten.
Elliot James Reay was traveling in the US, trying to finish a song, when his manager called. There was an invitation to join Singer 2026, a prime-time live music show in China. Reay didn't hesitate. He had traveled the world before he was a full-time musician, but had run out of money before reaching China. "I went everywhere but China," he said while sitting for an interview with the Global Times, sitting in the office of his label in Beijing, from which the Palace Museum can be seen not far away.
Reay is, in the West, a very 2020s kind of artist. He began posting short covers on short video platform TikTok in 2019; during the UK Covid lockdown, he chose to focus on growing his fan base. He now has millions of followers across platforms, and his debut single notched 10 million views before it was even released. In the British industry, this is both a leg-up and a trap. "You can have all the followers," he says, "but they don't guarantee people will buy tickets."
In China, that equation flipped.
Nervous again
The Chinese show, Singer 2026 is broadcast completely live, with no pitch correction. For Reay, who had played enough small gigs to feel comfortable in his own skin, it was a shock. "I haven't felt nerves in a long time," he says. "But I've never been in a competition before. To have my singing judged against other people made me really nervous."
He watched Week One's performances from the wings and saw why. "The standard was terrifying," he says.
But the format, he admits, is something the UK no longer has: a televised singing contest that treats vocal ability as a public event, not a pre-packaged product. "It made me feel like I just started my career again."
Reay's lane is retro. Not as pastiche, but as lineage. He wears the silhouette of Elvis Presley, sings in the grain of 1950s pop, and writes songs that sound like they were cut from a Sun Records demo. He could have sanded it down for Chinese audiences, but he didn't.
"Someone has to start the wave before you can see it," he says. Among the songs he performed were "Unchained Melody" and his original track "I Think They Call This Love," which he co-wrote with his girlfriend. He points out that the Beatles still sit next to Taylor Swift on the radio, and that pop started in the 50s. "It's the foundations of pop," he says.
Learning to feel the words
In the final, Reay performed a bilingual version of the Chinese song "Hou Hui Wu Qi" (The End of the World). It was his first time singing in another language. He spent five days learning the Chinese lyrics, listening to the original on loop.
"There are sounds in Chinese we just don't have in English," he says. "I couldn't hear the difference at first. I'd say it, and Helen (his translator) would say, 'No.' I thought I was saying the same thing." Eventually, he stopped trying to hear it and started trying to feel it. "It became more about how it felt to say it. How I place my tongue in my mouth," he says.
He didn't understand the meaning until day three. "Helen gave me a card with the Chinese characters and the English translation. It's very poetic," he says. The performance received a strong reaction, with it being called an attempt at "cultural fusion."
He had saved his own original, "I Think They Call This Love," co-written with his girlfriend, for the same final. He had held the song back deliberately. "I knew that any week was my last week," he says, "but I knew that if I made it to the grand final that I had to do it then." He had no idea it would become the last song of the entire show.
When he finished, he walked straight off stage, took his girlfriend's hand, and the two of them left together, a moment that trended on Chinese social media that night.
The song is about the exact point they realized they were in love; it was also the first track of his career he fully believed in and pushed into the world. Having her there to watch it live, after weeks of her only seeing performances on a phone in a hotel room, "tied the whole thing in a bow at the end."
A touring musician, not a TikToker
Reay is open about the tension between his origin story and his ambition. "I don't want to be a TikTok celebrity," he says. "I'm a musician. I want to tour."
The platform gave him an audience, but it also boxed him in. He remembers friends who wrote incredible songs during lockdown, while he chose to build a fan base. Now, he says, some of those friends have had to stop writing and make TikTok videos instead.
China, he says, gave him permission to be both an online creator and a live performer. Universal Music, his label, didn't push him to chase trends. "They never said, 'Do this, do that,'" he says. "They supported what I wanted to sing, and then they made it the best version they could."
Before Reay, a string of international artists had already found warm receptions and career-shifting opportunities in China. Kazakhstani singer Dimash Kudaibergen, Malaysian star Shila Amzah, US country artist Mickey Guyton, British vocalist Jessie J, and French singer-songwriter Joyce Jonathan all won large Chinese audiences through high-profile television appearances and live performances, each using the platform to open a new chapter in their careers.
He's already planning a return. He wants to bring a tour. He wants to buy the traditional instruments he saw on set and take them home to England. "I'm going to learn how to play them," he says, "and maybe put them into my music."
The advice he'd give other Western artists looking East is to stay loyal to yourself. "Be yourself," he says. "It's very easy to want to change yourself to fit into a market, but at the end of the day, if you stay true to yourself, you'll be happy."
"In the UK, I felt like I needed to do other things to make other people happy," he says.
"If I hadn't stopped doing that, I wouldn't be sitting here. I wouldn't have done the show. My whole journey would be different," he says.
。 Kenny 编译 2月14日，奥克兰机场一名前行李搬运工因走私毒品被判入狱14年。 这位被判刑的47岁男子被控在疫情封国期间，试图将冰毒走私带入新西兰。
B | 他被认为是犯罪的主要组织者，被捕后他拒不认罪。 Advertise with us 2020年5月，新西兰海关拦截了一名旅客，在他的随身行李箱里搜出19.4公斤冰毒（甲基安非他命），黑市价值约为800万纽币。 去年9月的庭审证据显示，这名旅客是出生在美属萨摩亚的新西兰人。2020年3月，在新西兰进入第一次全国封城期间，他利用持有的美国护照飞往洛杉矶，从当地毒枭那里购买了冰毒，然后通过在新西兰航空认识的“内部人士”，将冰毒带回了新西兰。 他不知道的是，由于他之前曾尝试用邮政方式将冰毒寄回自己位于奥克兰Māngere的住址，已经引起海关警觉和警方监视。
C | 他的手机通话也被窃听和录音。 图片来源：Getty Images 到达奥克兰机场后，他向行李处理人员发送短信，要求对方将装满毒品的手提箱放上行李传送带，然后通过传送带绕开安检，直到机场外跟他汇合。 证据显示，这起团伙作案中有人被承诺如果成功了，就能拿到2万纽币的报酬。
D | 调查经理Dominic Adams说，判决意味着代号“桑塔纳”（Operation Santana）的打击集团犯罪行动完美收官。
E | 2020年5月，警方以走私毒品罪一共逮捕了五人，其中四人都是当庭认罪。 Adams说：“海关了解在机场和港口工作的人们可能面临胁迫、金钱承诺或是各种诱惑。” “但今天的判决发出一个明确信号：你将失去一切——金钱、与家人的时光、未来的职业前景，”他说。 相关阅读： 多位移民为偿还债务不择手段种起了大麻 已被驱逐出境 注：本文为编译/原创，欢迎转发分享；但严禁复制等未经授权的非法使用。违反上述声明者，本网将追究其相关法律责任。使用授权请联系[email protected]。
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