Toronto Singer-Songwriter henryqin’s Lovelorn Single ‘Shade of Hue’ Unveils Bittersweet Tale of Young Love and Loss
Young love is hard and unrequited but young love is even harder. Just ask henryqin, the singer-songwriter born in Shanghai and based in Toronto, who documents his own teenage romance in his latest lovelorn single, “shade of hue.”
The track, out now, tells the story of a fateful day spent sightseeing in Toronto at the end of his freshman year.
“It only took a few months for an eighteen-year-old hopelessly romantic boy to almost give up on ever finding teenage romance,” he says of the song’s inspiration. “Just days before I flew home for summer, I ran into this guy at my friend’s residence, and we instantly connected while watching a game. Later, he proposed to take me to my first Blue Jays game and teach me how to take photos with his digital cameras.”
They spent the day together, taking photos in the city and talking “passionately and endlessly” about their interest. “I was so excited to get to know more about him and how this romance could take me, until on the way back from the game, when he picked up a phone call, which turned out to be from his girlfriend.” They became friends instead.
“I had been so afraid to even acknowledge those feelings I once had that I only looked back to them months later,” he says. “I remember, last August, sitting on my bed, strumming a Cadd9 chord, and as the humming came off my mind, tears streamed down my face. Barely able to enunciate the words because of sobbing, I wrote the first draft of this song.”
“Those tears didn’t just come from the pity of what could or should have been between us. It’s also a reflection of the absolute hopelessness for love after repeatedly regaining hope and then losing it.” Still, there’s a thread of optimism holding the echoing track together. “It’s not that sad of a song because that night contains so many beautiful memories I won’t ever forget about. I won’t forget about those magical interactions, about that baseball game, or about his digital camera. Especially not about the ‘shade of hue’ of every single picture he took that night.”
Crafting soundscapes and lyrics from his personal experiences, the 19-year-old is gearing up to release his debut EP, BAY-COLLEGE on July 26. Acting as the writer, composer, and producer of his work, every sound is self-made. Having released his debut single “Istanbul” this January, he has so much more to explore. henryqin is ready to bring his deeply personal music to the world.
Hi Henry, care to introduce yourself?
Hi there to everyone who’s reading! I’m a 19-year-old singer-songwriter making pop-rock/indie-pop-ish music. I write about my life, what I see, and what I feel- right now I’m studying at the University of Toronto. Anyway, I learned classical music on the piano when I was four and picked up a guitar at thirteen. And that changed everything. I started playing non-classical music more frequently and when I was in Grade 10, I wrote my first song. I never stopped writing since, and in fact, that’s probably the label I would associate myself with the most- a songwriter. However, I also learned to produce by myself- my two already-released songs are both produced solely by me. And yeah, if you are a fan of artists like Conan Gray, Wallows, or maybe Taylor Swift (which I obviously am…), you might feel quite excited about discovering me as your new favorite artist, especially as I release more music and show you more sides of me!
Tell us about the process of recording “shade of hue”?
Writing this song took twenty minutes while the recording took weeks: to start, I played around with the drum machines on Logic Pro- picked a kick and a snare, then kept experimenting until I made the loop sound something like what you hear now in the song, adding variations as the song goes. After that, I recorded strumming on my acoustic guitar (who I’ve had for almost seven years now), and as cool as it sounded, it didn’t give me the dreamy feeling of falling in love that I envisioned. So I recorded on my electric guitar instead- but the raw sounds were still not enough- I played around with all kinds of special effects. Now the song has a basic structure for me to record vocals on. I had to try many different things to get the vocal texture I wanted- the distance from the mic, the input volume, the EQ…… By the way, when I record something, I look absolutely feral- swaying my arms like a chimpanzee, squinting my eyes as if I just ate a lemon- all that to get me into the vibe ready for recording the vocals.
A fun fact about this song is halfway towards my recording session, I caught a terrible, absolutely terrible, cold at the time; So I had to work with what I got. That means HEAVY vocal editing- no, I don’t mean autotune, I meant as in taking parts from one take and patching it with another- I probably have something like 150 takes in total. Learned this trick from Billie Eilish and her brother FINNEAS! I love them. Finally, I decided to add some strings and piano for more layers (all programmed)! To sum up, the recording has been so fun, also exhausting. Anyway, I prefer writing.
Who was the first and most recent Canadian artist to blow you away?
The first one would be Avril Lavigne- she released her first song before I was even born, but her music became my childhood and teenage anthems as I heard and discovered more and more about her. “When You’re Gone”, “What The Hell” and “I’m With You” are probably some of the best pop-rock songs of all time. She’s also touring in Toronto this summer!!
And the most recent one would be Carly Rae Jepson. Yes, I know “Call Me Maybe” is over ten years old, and I have indeed been a fan since. But recently rediscovering her 2015 album E·MO·TION has made me fall in love with the 80s-inspired pop songs again. Songs like “Your Type”, “Run Away With Me” and “All That” are just absolutely mesmerizing and additive. In fact, her sound might be a big inspiration for my future albums to come.
What’s an album that you have in your collection that would surprise people?
I’m known to be a fan of pop and all its sub-genres. And my current music genre is very indie-ish and acoustic instrument-inspired. So it might surprise people that one of my most listened to albums is a musical album- the soundtrack of “Lala Land”. The theater and jazz-inspired, piano-centered, breathtaking collection of songs takes me back to the movie each time I listen to it. I cried to “City of Stars” after dancing to “Another Day of Sun”. Just a spoiler alert, “Another Day of Sun” is the inspiration for one of my favorite songs I wrote that’s probably coming in like a year!
What are your plans for Spring and Summer?
Working on and releasing my debut EP!!! “shade of hue” is one of the six stories about my self-discovery journey in connections with strangers, friends, romances, or just myself during my freshman year at university last year. My plan is to have all six stories put out before summer ends- working by myself is kinda slow, but it also gives me a great degree of freedom- you gotta take what you got, although I’d be stoked to work with other people in the future. Anyway, it’s called “BAY-COLLEGE”- I’ll tell you more about its name in later interviews perhaps. The EP has maybe one more song similar to “shade of hue” and the other four with quite different sounds, but inside those distinct shells comes the consistent core of my songwriting.
Connect with henryqin:
Bandcamp