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 sight-seeing 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.
