The term shídàiqǔ is believed to have originated in Hong Kong to describe a genre of popular Chinese music that gained prominence in Shanghai during the early to mid-20th century.
Shidaiqu has inspired Gary Lucas for his album The Edge of Heaven and DJs such as Ian Widgery and his Shanghai Lounge Divas project.
On the other hand, if cinema was the origin of many songs, Wong Kar-wai used them again for illustrating his movie "In the Mood for Love"; Rebecca Pan, one of the actresses in this film, was also one of those famous shidaiqu singers.
Despite some of the songs intended to nation build, the government deemed Shidaiqu as "yellow music"[11] and described it as "pornographic and commercial".
[12] The tradition then moved to Hong Kong and reached its height from the 1950s to the late 1960s, when it was replaced by Taiwanese pop (sung in Mandarin) and later Cantopop (Cantonese popular music).
[citation needed] While the tradition continued to thrive in Taiwan and Hong Kong, Shidaiqu gained popularity in mainland China once more during the 1980s.
[13] In more recent years, a group called the Shanghai Restoration Project uses both the 1980s and 1940s pop songs to create electronic music.