The Red Dragon Lord is OP, but Insists on a Pop Culture Invasion!

Chapter 266: Chapter 219: Makeshift Troupe on a Grand Stage

In the control room, Zog awkwardly scratched his head.

There was a huge problem. A huge problem with the recording of the show.

The first episode of *Feilin’s Best Songs* was off to a bad start. A full ten contestants had gone by so far in the recording, and not a single one had been chosen by the mentors.

That wasn’t even the worst part.

It would have been acceptable if they simply hadn’t been chosen by the mentors, as long as their performances were at least listenable and usable in the final cut.

However, the singing of every contestant who had taken the stage so far was pure torture for the live audience.

They were off-key, their voices cracked, and they forgot their lyrics.

The initial call had been for shorter, more entertaining songs, not serious music.

As a result, most of those who passed the auditions were amateurs; professional singers from opera troupes were few and far between.

There weren’t many Minstrels, either. Zog had previously seen an epic poem with over two hundred thousand words of lyrics among the audition submissions—the work of a Minstrel.

According to Xiaode, most of the submissions from Minstrels were of this type.

This was also because the initial recruitment ad had asked contestants for "your proudest work."

But since being a Minstrel is a profession that leans toward the literary, long epic works sit at the very top of their pecking order.

So, what they submitted were the sprawling, seemingly nonsensical epics they had poured their hearts and souls into creating.

If they were allowed to perform these, a single person’s song could fill several episodes.

The current amateurs on the show, who came from all walks of life, had decent songs, but they all shared one fatal flaw.

They had never sung under the gaze of a live audience numbering in the thousands.

Zog had considered that they might struggle to adapt to the stage lights, the live band, the microphones and speakers, the monitor system, and so on.

So he’d given each participant ample time for sound checks, but he had completely forgotten about the pressure from a live audience.

The largest audience most of these contestants had ever performed for was a gathering of friends and family, coworkers at the Factory during a lunch break, or drunk patrons in a late-night bar.

During the sound checks, facing an empty auditorium, every one of them had performed naturally and smoothly.

Today, when it was time for the official performance, they all bombed spectacularly.

One Dwarf even chugged two bottles before going on stage for some liquid courage.

After two bottles, he did indeed manage to ignore the audience, but he became a little too excited and started ignoring the mentors as well.

After forgetting his lyrics, he started composing on the spot, making it up as he went along.

The improvised lyrics were also very characteristic of a Dwarf.

They consisted mainly of jokes about Elves.

The two most conspicuous Elves in the room were Xiaode and Roline—and a Zor Elf is still an Elf.

This Dwarf also displayed the renowned fearlessness his people took such pride in.

He made fun of Roline.

I’ve got to say, the aggressiveness of Dwarves is really something else.

Lady Roline immediately began to chant a Magic spell.

This forced the recording to pause for a moment while Zog went to hold Roline back.

The contestant who came closest to being chosen by a mentor was the "Best Campus Singer" from Repin.

She chose to sing with her eyes closed.

But halfway through her song, she couldn’t resist. She cracked her eyes open just a sliver to peek at the mentors.

She saw that none of them had turned around.

She panicked.

Right then and there, she lost the beat and went off-key.

She realized her mistake.

Which made her panic even more.

Then she went even more off-key...

After her performance, Roline’s critique was tinged with a "you-could-have-done-so-much-better" kind of disappointment.

But because she came across as too harsh—and adding in her recent attempt to attack the Dwarf—she scared the poor singer to tears.

More than three hours into the recording, the best performance so far had, surprisingly, come from the girl group that served as the warm-up act.

Of course, since this was an all-ages show, the girl group’s image had been tweaked to be more wholesome, and their lyrics had been polished by an old scholar from the Northern Domain.

They earned wave after wave of cheers from the live audience.

You wouldn’t remember a thing about it afterward, but at least the atmosphere was cheerful while they were performing.

Even Furin expressed her approval, nodding along to the simple, upbeat rhythm.

"I have to say, they’re surprisingly good," Furin commented with praise.

As the nominal chief designer for stage effects, she had spent some time with the production team testing the Illusion Techniques.

The warm-up girl group had been the ones serving as stand-ins during stage blocking back then.

It was a complete departure from their youthful, girlish image on stage. Offstage, they smoked, drank, and cursed like sailors—the very picture of young delinquents.

"See? That’s what you call ’packaging’," Zog explained smugly.

’Now I get why those talent agencies back on Earth love manufactured stars,’ he thought. ’The ones with no individual talent who have to rely entirely on marketing.’

’Artists like that can only survive by relying on the company. They have no ability to be independent, which makes them easy to control completely.’

’An artist with too much individual talent might just decide to go solo at any time.’

Zog continued, "Otherwise, why do you think people in brothels always make up sob stories about paying for a family member’s medical bills, putting a relative through school, or having no choice but to pay off debts? That’s packaging, too."

"Oh, is that so?"

"Of course."

"But why are you so familiar with the subject?"

Furin’s tone suddenly shifted.

"Er..."

Zog looked a bit flustered. "It’s... it’s because I wanted to better penetrate the market, so I researched the local customs and traditions of other races. I read the *Continent Customs Identification Guide* purely for academic research purposes. Yes, that’s it."

"Pfft. Why are you so nervous?" Furin laughed brightly.

’Teasing this dorky little red dragon is my favorite.’

Unlike the cheerful atmosphere in the control room at the start of the show,

everyone—Zog, Sir Gordo, and all the assistant directors—had fallen silent.