Chen member of the girl group S.H.E. / FRI 4-29-22 / Victor Nobel winner for discovery of cosmic rays / Rhetorical question of self-deprecation / Where Oliver Hazard Perry said We have met the enemy and they are ours / Eerie-sounding instruments that are played without physical contact / An infant's mind according to John Locke

Constructor: Erica Hsiung Wojcik

Relative difficulty: Medium

THEME: none 

Word of the Day: S.H.E. (44A: ___ Chen, member of the girl group S.H.E. => ELLA) —

S.H.E is a Taiwanese girl group whose members are Selina Jen, Hebe Tien, and Ella Chen. They formed in 2001 and are managed by HIM International Music but decided not to renew their contract in 2019 due to having their own management company.

Since releasing their debut album Girls Dorm (2001), S.H.E has recorded 13 albums with sales totaling more than 10 million, and set ticketing records in each of their two concert tours. Widely regarded as the most successful and enduring Mandopop* group, S.H.E has also acted in seven drama series, hosted two variety shows, and contributed ten songs to six drama soundtracks.   

*Mandopop or Mandapop refers to Mandarin popular music. The genre has its origin in the jazz-influenced popular music of 1930s Shanghai known as Shidaiqu; with later influences coming from Japanese enka, Hong Kong's Cantopop, Taiwan's Hokkien pop, and in particular the Campus Song folk movement of the 1970s. 'Mandopop' may be used as a general term to describe popular songs performed in Mandarin. Though Mandopop predates Cantopop, the English term was coined around 1980 after "Cantopop" became a popular term for describing popular songs in Cantonese. "Mandopop" was used to describe Mandarin-language popular songs of that time, some of which were versions of Cantopop songs sung by the same singers with different lyrics to suit the different rhyme and tonal patterns of Mandarin. (wikipedia)

Is this a debut? The constructor's name isn't showing up in my NYTXW constructor database, but I know her work well (from other venues, apparently!). This is a sturdy grid, with mostly clean fill but perhaps not as much freshness and sass as I like to see on Fridays. The long answers aren't boring, but they're not particular exciting either, the exception being the top 2/3 of that center stack, and then The SHIRELLES, who excite *me*, at any rate, possibly because they were the one girl group in this puzzle that I knew! The other ... well, I don't know what the puzzle was doing there, exactly. I am fairly confident that the vast majority of NYTXW solvers won't know who ELLA Chen is, and that's just fine, but if you're going to introduce someone you know is going to be largely a mystery to the solving audience, at least serve up a clue that tells you ... something. Something specific and informative. Telling me she's part of the "girl group" S.H.E. only had me wondering "What ... is S.H.E.?" Now, because I have a blog and have to write about these puzzles, I looked all of this up. And it really seems like the clue buried the lede—they're a *Taiwanese* girl group whose fame is considerable but not primarily in the English-speaking world. The clue could've at least dropped "Taiwanese" or "C-Pop" or really anything that would help place the answer culturally / geographically. At least then I'd feel like I had context. "Girl group S.H.E." tells me nothing. For all I knew, ELLA Chen was from Brooklyn and S.H.E. was a rap trio. In the world of popular music, I know H.E.R. for sure, but I do not know S.H.E., which is funny, grammatically if not otherwise. The puzzle is already awash in little names, none of which is first-tier famous (HESS ALLEN RAMOS ADEN) (I knew GASOL, but I'll throw his name into the group too, since I know a lot of you didn't). The crosses are fair all around, but today the short names just feel like crosswordese that's being dressed up in somewhat obscure clothing. If the goal is to make new names stick, then the clues have to be better than the ELLA clue.