Hua Chenyu

Early life

Hua Chenyu was born on February 7, 1990 in the city of Shiyan. He lived with his father during his childhood, who got married again when he was 10 years old. He began playing the flute at the age of 6 and the piano in the fifth grade when he realized the flute was not enough to express music vision. He soon mastered the piano and wrote his first song at twelve.

After finishing middle school, he moved to Wuhan alone to receive more professional music training. In 2010, he entered Wuhan Conservatory of Music, where he studied vocal performance and gained more stage experience as the vocalist of a college rock band, Conseer. At the end of his period in the conservatory, he made definitive steps in order to start his musical career.

Super Boy

In 2013, shortly before graduating from conservatory, Hua entered the casting for the Super Boy contest. During this show produced by Hunan TV, the young singer started his rise among the contestants. On his first appearance to the audience, he sang his original “Lyricless Song” that gave him the label of “Martian”. Thanks to his mentor Laure Shang who appreciated his talents in expressing emotions with music, he entered into the main round of the competition. His powerful voice, mature singing skills, expressive performance and popularity led him through the whole competition to the final round. At the final round of the contest on September 27, 2013, Chenyu Hua eventually earned the champion of 2013 “Super Boy” with a score of 1606.

Since then, Chenyu Hua officially started out his career as a singer. After the competition, Hua was signed to EE-Media, the giant Mainland Chinese record label where the most of the Super Boy and Super Girl contestants are linked. His debut single “Me and Myself” was released in September 2013. Hua also took part in the Super Boy Tour with other contestants, in which they toured 11 major Chinese cities. He gained the title of “City Star”, an award voted by fans before each concert and counting in the box office contribution 3 times (Wuhan, Shenzhen and Suzhou respectively). This has shown his continuing popularity even after the contest.

2013 - 2014

From November 2013 to January 2014, Chenyu Hua represented Hunan TV to compete for the quota to perform on the mega CCTV New Year’s Gala 2014. He, with the support of audience and compliment from judges, was the first one to gain the invitation card to the CCTV New Year’s Gala 2014. Hua at last performed the song “In That Distant Place” during the Gala on 30 January 2014. After that, he had joined various galas in different major TV stations in Mainland China. On January 31, 2014, he covered “We Are Young” in the New Year’s Gala for Beijing TV and “The Last Blossom” on Spring Festival’s Gala in Hunan TV.

In March, Besunyen announced the endorsement of Chenyu Hua for the company’s therapeutic teas.

Chenyu Hua went to Italy and Spain to film for the Hunan TV reality show “Divas Hit the Road” in April 2014 and the show was broadcast starting from April 25. The first episode had already got the highest audience measurement within the same time period. In June, he was invited by the popular Korean eyewear brand ALO as the first Chinese brand ambassador and went to Korea for the advertising photos shooting.

In less than a year since Hua’s debut, he announced the news of holding his very first brand-named concert, Mars Concert in May 2014. On 28 June 2014, over 10,000 concert tickets for the first show on 6 September were sold out within 1 minute 32 seconds. Due to the heated response, the organizers announced to hold an extra show on 7 September. The press conference of the Mars Concert 2014 was held in Huiyuan Space of the Beijing Mastercard Center. This had made him the first one in the Chinese music industry to hold press conference in venue with thousand people’s capacity. Chenyu Hua was the first singer in Asian to display the concert poster on the big screen of The Place in Beijing. Hua’s maiden solo concerts were successfully held on September 6 and 7, 2014 at Beijing Mastercard Center (originally Beijing Wukesong Culture & Sports Center and currently LeSports Center). The 6 September concert was unprecedentedly broadcast live through QQ Music and HunanTV, attracting more than 400,000 users watching the show online together. Over 120,000 E-tickets were sold. This brand new kind of technology and live broadcast had created various records of the Chinese entertainment industry.

On the same day of his concert (6 Spet), the international jewelry brand, Pomellato, announced Chenyu Hua as the brand ambassador for the Dodo and Pomellato 67 series.

Not long after his smash hit concert, Hua released his first solo full-length album, "Quasimodo's Gift" in 19 September 2014 both in Mainland and overseas. This atypical album has a great variety of musical style, ranging from rock, indie and folk. Quasimodo’s Gift does not feature songs with the theme of love and relationship as like the mainstream pop songs do, but it has used a first-person perspective to describe the world as seen from the eye of Chenyu Hua. The sense of loneliness ahs filled up the whole album and yet, not sorrow. The overseas version album had ranked number one on the Taiwan Five Music Chart for several weeks for the booming sales volume.

In November, he was invited to the online variety show of Tencent, namely “Say Hi! The Hit of China”(Hi歌). In the programme, he chose to rearrange the song “Spring” and won the “Annual Hit Song of China”(年度Hi歌). On Christmas Eve, he performed the rearranged piano version “Shimmer” and “Quasimodo’s Gift” in pianist Langlang’s Beijing concert.

2015

On January 1, 2015, Chenyu Hua for the first time joined and performed in the Liaoning TV New Year Gala. On 10 January, “Shimmer” was announced to be the interlude song of the Chinese TV drama “You Are My Sunshine”(何以笙箫默). On 8 February (Los Angeles Time), Chenyu Hua was invited by Billboard as VIP spectator to the 57th Annual Grammy Awards. On 17 February, Chenyu Hua performed in the Liaoning TV Chinese New Year Gala. On 27 April, Hua published his vocal experimental music “Cancer”. On the Forbes China Celebrity 100 announed on May 11, Chenyu Hua was found on the chart for the first time with the integrated ranking of 91.

In early May, Hua’s brand-named concert was announced to hold on August 1 in Shanghai. Almost 10,000 tickets were sold out within 35 seconds while over 160,000 people were online. This had once again broken the online ticketing record in the Mainland. Due to the heated response, his company announced two extra shows at the same venue, on July 31 and August 2 respectively. It had made him the first Mainland singer to hold concert for 3 consecutive nights in the same venue. His concert on 1 August was broadcast online through Tencent and HunanTV(芒果TV). Tencent online audience had reached 2.64 million. This had also renewed the record for online concert real-time broadcast.

On September 27, Hua attended CCTV Mid Autumn Festival Gala and performed “Shimmer”.

On October 28, his second physical album “Aliens” started pre-ordering on Jingdong. The limited 30,000 pieces almost sold out within a day. On November 7, his first digital album as well started pre-ordering. Within 8 minutes, over 100,000 pieces were sold. It has attained sale volume of 350,000 on the first day of sale.

On November 13 , the first-ever Chinese production music study tour reality show which Chenyu Hua had joined, “Be the Idol” (唱游天下) by Jiangsu TV, was on air.

On December 18 , “Aliens” was put on sale on overseas music platforms like iTunes while the overseas version of “Aliens” was also officially started selling on December 22. The promotional video of “Aliens” was aired on the LED screen at New York Time Square for a week starting from 23 December.

On New Year’s Eve, Chenyu Hua for 3 consecutive years appeared in the Hunan TV New Year Countdown Concert.

2016

On January 7, Chenyu Hua attended the 2015 Weibo’s Awards Ceremony and won the title of Annual Most Popular Male Singer and 2015 King of Fresh Asia Chart. On January 8, Hua performed in “Langlang’s Sky – Langlang and His Friends Spring Music Festival”. The show was broadcast through Liaoning TV on February 1. On February 8, he performed “For My Future Child” on Beijing TV Chinese New Year Gala.

On March 4, Chenyu Hua appeared as guest on the variety show “The Negotiator” (王牌对王牌) on ZhejiangTV. His rearrangement of the song “Boluo Boluo Mi” originally by Xie Na (菠萝菠萝蜜) had gained widespread concern and positive comments. On March 7, the interlude song “The Rampage” for the movie “Who Sleeps My Bro” was released. On April 7, he released the song “Mars Intelligence Agency” which is the theme song for the online talk show with the same title. On April 9, he participated in the 16th Annual Festival of Top Chinese Music as ambassador and received 2 awards i.e. Annual Best Album Performance and Annual Best Idol.

On May 8, he showed up in the Beijing Student Film Festival Closing Ceremony and for the first time performed "The Rampage" live. On the same day, Hunan TV telecasted the cooking programme “Fresh Sunday”. Hua also displayed his cooking talent in the programme. On July 1, Chenyu Hua appeared in the final episode of Season 4 Hurry Up, Brother (奔跑吧兄弟), teaming up with Luhan.

First song for his third solo album, "The Giant Deer", was released on June 23. The second song, "The Creator", being the theme song of the " 2016 Taobao Festival" was also released on June 30.

The first stop of his 2016 Mars Concert Tour was Beijing. The concert was held in Beijing LeSports Center. He has become the first China singer to hold concert with 4-side stage among his generation. He had invited Jeff Chang (张信哲) as the special guest and they performed "Shimmer" together.

On July 8, Chenyu Hua's newly released song, "Here We Are", was announced to be the theme song for movie Line Walker (film) (使徒行者). Another self-composed song, "To Be Free", was released on August 3 and it is the promotional song for movie The Warriors Gate. On August 16, Chenyu Hua had released his second English song For Forever. This song was specially created for the Mars Concert.

On August 20, Chenyu Hua joined the last episode of Season 2 Challenger Alliance (挑戰者聯盟), singing Love is Over with Cheney Chen and Stupid Child with Aska Yang and Li Chen.

The second 2016 Mars Concert was held in Shanghai Mercedes-Benz Arena. He duetted with Liu Tao, who was the special guest, on the song "Endless Embrace" (the version covered by Leslie Cheung and Winnie Hsin).

"Few Miles Away From Loneliness", composed by Hua himself, was released on 13 September.

The finale of 2016 Mars Concert took place in Shenzhen Bay Sports Centre, with Khalil Fong as the special guest. The live online broadcast of the Shanghai and Shenzhen concerts, supported by LeEco, had accumulated over 4.3 million audiences.

On 27 September, his 3rd anniversary of debut, Hua attended Annual Award Ceremony of Fresh Asia and won the Best Male Singer.

The first episode of the music variety show "Heavenly Sound" was broadcast on 10 October. Chenyu Hua joined the show as a star mentor and would be challenged by some aspiring singers. The re-arranged version of "My Skate Shoes" (originally by Joseeh Punmanlon 约瑟翰·庞麦郎) stormed all over Asia. The song has gained 33 million views on Miaopai within 4 days of uploading and over 13 million views on Youtube as at 24 December 2016. The song is renamed as "My Skate Shoes 2016" and is included in his third album.

On 12 December, Chenyu Hua received the 2016 Mnet Asian Music Awards(MAMA) Best Asian Artist (China) award.

On 18 December, Chenyu Hua was titled the Annual Explosive Singer with Attitude (年度最有态度燃爆唱将) in the 163 People with Attitudes Annual Gala (网易有态度人物盛典) In 2016 Youku Young Choice's Award, held on 21 December, Hua was titled as the Annual Breakthrough Artist and won the Weibo Gearing Up Chart with 630 billions votes.

Awards