The Hidden Tracks

“I wanted to make an album for who I used to be,” Dean Ting tells Apple Music. “Many of these songs may have been done by other singers—but for me, they’re not old material.” Since starting work in music in 2004, the songwriter has provided his adventurous blend of funk and R&B to countless Mandopop artists from David Tao to Bibi Zhou, accumulating a treasure trove of original songs before launching a solo career in 2017. Compared to the thematic concepts running through his first two LPs, 2017’s <i>The Journal</i> and 2019’s <i>The Script of Destiny</i>, his third studio album, <i>The Hidden Tracks</i>, has the loosely organised feel of a best-of collection—except that this is the first proper release of his version of these songs.

“I started from stories,” Ting says of the tracklist. “I didn’t put too much effort into pursuing uniformity but concentrated on choosing stories that went in different directions—love, family, friendship and the self.” The album came about as a response to the popularity of Ting’s original demos, which began circulating online a few years back. Revisiting them now with the benefit of up to two decades of additional experience, the artist is able to flesh out his original arrangements, get creative with instrumentation and pursue some exciting collaborations with artists worldwide.

In addition to the intimate R&B that is his trademark, Ting shows off his adventurous side on the album—the pop-punk-flavoured “Puppy Love” displays a cartoonish sense of humour, while the touching ballad “The Trunk” departs from his customary blend of documentary and impressionistic writing to spin a gritty fictional crime narrative.

<b>Capturing Moments in Time</b>
“I do demos a little differently from other people,” Ting says. “They’re essentially complete—lyrics, music, arrangement and recording—since I have a clear idea of what I want and don’t treat it as just another job. The songs that ultimately get released may not use my original stories or lyrics, but I retain a picture in mind of what they were like when they first came into the world.”

There’s no better example of the completeness of Ting’s demos than “Skinny Love”, a stripped-back acoustic number with layered harmonies. Recorded in 2012, the demo was released practically unaltered as a single in 2024. “One day I had a sudden surge of inspiration and wrote the song out fast,” he says. “I just wanted to record it in the quickest way possible. So I used what for a musician were just the most basic of tools. When I went back to remake it in 2023, I discovered that whatever I added only weighed it down rather than making it more complete.” Ting offers a lesson from this experience: “What this means to me is that I need to always be aware of what the most important ideas are in the music.”

The album’s two interludes are also the product of spontaneous inspiration—“Bygone” originated as an a cappella outro to “Butterfly Illusions”, while “Presentness” grew from “Untold Blossom”. “One day when [my wife] Ashlee [Yip] and I were driving out to a park, I was humming the melody to ‘Untold Blossom’,” Ting says. “As we passed a natural area completely devoid of people, we recorded the environmental sounds. The air was clean with the windows rolled down and it was a really cosy feeling being in nature. I added in some harmonies later.”

<b>Friends for a Lifetime</b>
“I’m really fortunate to have a group of musical collaborators that’s so stable and long-lasting,” Ting says. These musical partners include singer Ashlee Yip, producer Nathan Cheng, who also works on arrangements, and mixing engineer BigJ. “We’ve been working together since album number one.” Perhaps his closest collaborator is songwriting partner Sean Lee, a childhood friend. “We were classmates from preschool at the age of four all the way until high-school graduation,” he says. “We shared a love of music, films and football.”

Growing up, Lee was a source of facts and insight. “He’s always been more mature than me,” Ting admits. Lee’s lyrics would often have layers of meaning that Ting didn’t grasp at the time—as was the case for album opener ‘Butterfly Illusions’, a swinging number whose nylon guitar arrangement was inspired by a holiday in the seaside city of Qingdao and realised with American guitarist Dominick “Dom” Sanchez. “I only thought it painted a pretty picture,” Ting says. “Sean told me about the story he had in mind, and about the unique ecology of Australia and the one-of-a-kind species of butterfly. But I didn’t get it.”

Similarly, Lee’s lyrics to “The Shadow of You” only clicked when Ting got older. “Now, I see there’s something habitual in every long relationship, something easily forgotten because it becomes so natural,” he says. “We may not express love using our words, but love permeates the roots and branches of the lives of two individuals. So the song may be reminder not to overlook the details in life.”

Life’s little details abound in “Lifetime Friend”, a sunny catalogue of events from childhood through to adulthood, accented with a rap break and a brassy coda. “Ashlee and I wrote it for Sean,” Ting says. “It’s all real things that happened to him and me.”

<b>The Fundamental Sincerity of Music</b>
A songwriter whose words and music resonate with emotional energy, Ting points to the influence of the songs of Jonathan Lee and Emil Wakin Chau that he listened to as a kid. “They have a directed energy, but you don’t find it excessive,” he says. “There’s something inspiring right there on the surface—and it feels extremely sincere.” Gospel is another big influence on his writing. “I’ve always loved gospel music,” he says. “It’s given me lots of joy and power ever since I was young—it’s the kind of music that touches you directly in church.”

There’s plenty of power in the gospel pyrotechnics of “Loved One”, recorded remotely in New York and Beijing. “I wrote this one from the heart, not to influence anyone else but simply to express what I felt inside,” Ting says. “I originally wrote it as a duet, so for this remake I had to find someone to sing with me.” He invited South African gospel singer Motswedi Modiba (known to Chinese audiences as MOE. from her appearances on <i>Sing! China</i> in 2023), who had previously covered “Skinny Love”.

The songwriter applied his customary inventiveness to the track. “Rather than do a totally western gospel song, I wanted to try using Chinese,” he says. “In one sense as an experiment in East-West fusion, and also as a way to let worldwide listeners hear gospel music in Chinese. That’s the idea I had in mind when I first thought of collaborating with MOE.”

Ting’s collaboration with Evan Guo, a guitarist and singer he particularly admires, let both artists delve into the core of the creative process during the production of “Untold Blossom”. “Evan told me a while ago he loved this song,” he says. “So when I wanted to remake it, he was the first person I thought of to help with the arrangement. His guitar is always recognisable—there’s something special about the way he chooses his notes.”

Ting continues: “I don’t think of this song as a singer with an accompanist. It’s more like we found an empty spot and sat down on the grass and the two of us—one guitar and one voice—sang freely and naturally. It was like we were back in our earliest days and had left behind all external cares and returned to the fundamental simplicity of music: expressing ourselves through song.”