投稿類別：英文寫作類 篇名： An Investigation into Mayday’s History of Development and the Factors in Their Success 作者： 林詩軒。市立大甲高中。資訊應用科高三 10 班。 郭思敏。市立大甲高中。資訊應用科高三 10 班。 陳玟靜。市立大甲高中。資訊應用科高三 10 班。 指導老師： 陳志國 老師 羅芯茹 老師 An Investigation into Mayday’s History of Development and the Factors in Its Success Abstract Mayday has been one of the most popular male bands in Taiwan. Their success overshadows other existing bands in many ways. Undoubtedly, Mayday plays an essential role in Taiwan’s music industry. The current paper intends to review the development of Mayday and to explore the factors in its success. We adopted literature review analysis to compile the latest information of all five band members, namely, Monster, Ashin, Matthew, Richard, and Ming. In addition, after reviewing the history of Mayday, we divided their development into four stages and illustrated them one by one. Finally, after digesting all the sources of information that we gathered, we also presented the top seven factors in Mayday’s success both in Taiwan and abroad. Keywords: Mayday, band, pop music I. Introduction I.1 Background Music has been an indispensable part of many people’s daily life. Wherever you go, plenty of people can usually be seen wearing headphones listening to a variety of music. Taiwan, our homeland, is no exception. Among all the music genres, group music is an essential part in the music industry. However, there are a great number of groups that encounter obstacles and due to some reasons, could hardly be fully developed. Some group members might want to terminate their partnership with the group and go their own ways to further build up their own career as individual performers or totally turn to different works of life. Take Xiao Hu Dui (小虎隊), a celebrated male group during the 1990s, for example. They ended their career as singers and turned to acting when their popularity plummeted. Other group members might be at odds with one another simply because they pursue different things in life. A member of Energy, a male group, for instance, once had an argument with his agent about a contract because of their varied needs. For another example, the bandleader of Dream Girls, whose name was Emily, was verbally abused by her agent. As a result, she went to work in another company. Still others take a break from the music industry and become full-time learners for some time. Take Sodagreen (蘇打綠) for example. They wanted to further their singing skills and also to accompany their family, which took much time and effort. That’s why they decided to completely get away from the music industry for a short period of time before they returned back to the spotlight. Despite the above-mentioned challenges, some groups have indeed managed to make their career work. One of those groups in Taiwan is Mayday, which consists of five members, inclusive of Asian, Ming, Monster, Matthew, and Richard. Mayday is unique in many ways. First, they get along with one another very well. Probably because of this precious and mutual partnership, they have always been creating original pieces and working on the journey to realizing their dreams. They even call themselves the dream chasers. Furthermore, March 29th, 2017 had already been the 20th anniversary of Mayday. With all the extraordinary qualities that Mayday possesses, our group members think that Mayday is worth our attention and further research. 1 An Investigation into Mayday’s History of Development and the Factors in Its Success I.2 Motivation In fact, we thought of this topic since one of our group members was a fervent admirer of Mayday. Touched by Mayday’s passion for music, she always obtained inspirations and power to keep pursuing her dream by listening to Mayday’s music. After some discussion sessions, all three of us were eager to know more about Mayday. Therefore, we were determined to explore Mayday, which we were all interested in. In the beginning, we were so excited that we thought of many subtopics regarding Mayday to discuss, but we soon realized that they were too broad for us to handle at once. Thus, we decided to narrow down our focus in reference to a Chinese essay on why Mayday could be so successful (易韋帆、孫尚廷、許弘儒，2016). However, as time went by, we noticed that much information in that study had been outdated. It was obvious that new works must be done to update the development of Mayday. Besides, by writing in English, we hope to further share our findings with foreigners around the globe. Finally, we decided to find out the latest development of Mayday and also the core factors in their success. With those motivations in mind, we would like to investigate the factors behind the success of Mayday using the latest information we could obtain. I.3 Research Questions In this review-based study, we would try our every effort to fully respond to the following three research questions by compiling all the information we could get. 1. What are the latest personal profiles of Mayday’s members? 2. What is the development of Mayday up to August, 2017? 3. What are the major factors in Mayday’s success? II. Methodology II.1 Data Collection Procedures In an effort to explore the latest information and what the factors behind the success of Mayday are, we did the following things. First, we set up a public Google document page on which our members could immediately update the latest information wherever the Internet access was available, and our advisors could also revise the drafts that we typed on that page and informed us of the next step to take. It was not only effective but also convenient. Because this website was based on a cloud system that was reversible, we totally did not have to worry about losing our previous drafts and always had access to the latest version of draft. Secondly, we then searched for much related information not only from online sources but also from magazines and books. 2 An Investigation into Mayday’s History of Development and the Factors in Its Success II.2 Data Analysis Procedures We used content analysis to analyze our sources by following two steps. First, we read and digested the sources we found, and then we wrote down the key points of any single source of information on a piece of paper. Secondly, after reading all sources individually, we later pooled together all our notes to better depict the development of Mayday. Figure 1 showed the exact procedures and the time when we did those things. Last, but certainly not least, we also regularly had one-hour appointments to discuss our essay with our advisors after school every Tuesday. After data analysis and paper drafting, we still continued to check our drafts for multiple times so as to make this essay as good as possible. Chose the topic and research qeustions (November, 2016) Started collecting related literature during the winter break (January~Feburary, 2017) Digested literature and took notes (March, 2017) Narrowed the focus down and pooled all notes together for analysis (April, 2017) Wrote up the rough Chinese draft of this paper (May, 2017) Translated the Chinese version into English (June, 2017) Polished the draft to create the final draft (July~September, 2017) Figure 1 The Procedures of the Current Study III. Results and Discussion Based on our findings of content analysis, we categorized the information into three parts respectively in response to the three research questions. The first section is the updated introductions to Mayday’s five members, chronologically starting from the earliest member to the latest one that joined the band. In response to the second research question, we would then depict four stages of Mayday’s development. Finally, we presented seven major factors in Mayday’s success and their admirable spirits in response to the third research question. III.1 The Latest Profiles of Mayday’s Five Members III.1.1 Monster, the Bandleader Monster, whose original Chinese name is Wen Shang-yi, is the bandleader and guitar player of Mayday. He greatly admired Takahiro Matsumoto, the bandleader and guitar player of a Japanese band called B’z. Because of Tak, Monster started to enter the world of music. On the other hand, Monster’s academic performance was so good that his father hoped he could follow in his footsteps. Photo: Monster, the Bandleader Source: the official fans’ website 3 An Investigation into Mayday’s History of Development and the Factors in Its Success However, when he studied in the Affiliated Senior High School of National Taiwan Normal University (HSNU), he met a group of nice friends with a great enthusiasm for music, so he buried himself in music and this was a road of no return. In the college entrance exam, Monster got a full score in math and successfully entered the Department of Sociology in National Taiwan University. But since he was extremely absorbed in his music career, he flunked his physical education class for three times in a row; unfortunately, he was thus suspended from the university as a consequence. Despite his unsuccessful academic development, his music career got better and better when the rest of Mayday members joined him one by one. III.1.2 Ashin, the Vocalist The second member’s Chinese name is Chen, Shin-hong, who is known as Ashin. His position in Mayday is the vocalist. Chen graduated from the art program of HSNU, where he became acquainted with his lifelong friend, Monster. Ashin went through many obstacles on his way to becoming a singer for the following three reasons.