Cover Music producer Gareth Chan invites Tatler backstage to explore the stories behind his iconic collabs with Mirror’s Ian Chan and others (Photo: courtesy of Gareth Chan)
Music producer Gareth Chan invites Tatler backstage to explore the stories behind his iconic collabs with Mirror’s Ian Chan and others (Photo: courtesy of Gareth Chan)
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Gareth Chan is behind some of the biggest Canto-pop hits by Ian Chan, MC Cheung, Jay Fung, Kiri T and others. For Tatler, he shares how he became ‘Music Producer of the Year’ and reveals some exclusive BTS of his biggest successes
“Last year, I went all in”, says Hong Kong-based music producer Gareth Chan. He’s talking about his music career that saw a meteoric rise in 2024 alone. Indeed, he has won the Producer of the Year Award at the 2024 Ultimate Song Chart Awards and the hit song he co-produced with Kiri T, You Gotta Screw Up At Least Once, won the no.5 place in the Hong Kong Top 10 Songs list at the same competition.
That’s not all, he has produced more than 40 songs last year, with Ian Chan, Collar, MC Cheung, Jay Fung, Dear Jane, Nancy Kwai and other leading musicians, contributing deeply to Canto-pop scene in 2024.
So when he sits down with us for a chat and says, “I decided to treat 2024 like a video game to see if I could beat the ultimate boss. I gave up on holidays. I gave up on my health”, we believe him fully.
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Chan’s passion for music started early, when his sister took him to a rave while he was in middle school. “I fell in love with electronic music thanks to Frankie Lam, the DJ who was playing there. One day, I gathered the courage to go talk to him after a party, and out of generosity, he lent me some of his DJ sets. He kind of became my mentor.”
This mentorship also serendipitously helped Chan when he moved to Vancouver for studies in the late 1990s. He found that hip-hop was much more popular there than electronic music, so he channelled his mentor’s lessons to make beats for his friends.
When he moved back to Hong Kong ten years later, he started posting his own demo on Facebook for friends, which led to him being scouted by Hong Kong iconic singer and actor Leon Lai and his label, where he signed his first contract. Another highlight from Chan’s early career was when one of his demos was used in Janice Vidal’s song 積雪. “I went to the Hong Kong Coliseum for Vidal’s concert,” he recalls. “That was the first time I heard tens of thousands of people singing my song.”
“As music producers, we’re kind of psychologists, because we need to create a safe space for artists to be vulnerable to us.”
It might all sound like smooth sailing, but in reality Chan had to overcome many hurdles, the financial one being the most difficult. According to him, music producers aren’t well-paid and it’s not easy to get royalties from the songs you produce. “I worked a day job in server maintenance to be able to build my studio in my tiny flat,” he says. “But even then, I built everything myself through YouTube tutorials.”
Recognition came through hard work, but also timing, with the Covid years acting as a blessing in disguise for Chan. “Hong Kong went through a lot of transformation [around 2019] and everyone was trapped in here during the pandemic. It really forced us to flip the musical industry around. That’s when the next generation of artists started kicking in.”
Chan thinks the younger generation is more open to listening to different genres. Not everything is compared to K-pop anymore and the audience accepts more experimental work. Artists are also open to making their work more personal.
Music producer Gareth Chan recording with Ian Chan (Photo: Instagram / @garethchan)
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“My way of working with artists is to make sure that they don’t feel like working when we’re in the studio,” he says. “As music producers, we’re kind of psychologists because we need to create a safe space for artists to be vulnerable to us. They have to let go of their ego and stubbornness before they can actually perform a song.”
According to him, being a good producer involves channelling the artist’s energy and harmonising the creative talent in the room to foster chemistry. To help us better understand his approach, Chan shares the creative process behind three of his biggest successes.
‘The One for U’ by MC Cheung (with Jay Fung)
Above Gareth Chan and Jay Fung produced ‘The One for U’ by MC Cheung
“I love working with Jay [Fung], we’ve been friends for over ten years. I’ve seen him from his beginnings to the level of fame he has today. There’s no ego between us, so we give each other honest feedback on the lyrics and melodies we create together. We wrote The One for U for MC Cheung in 2022. We were sitting together after a recording session, and we had ten minutes left—so we decided to pump something out in ten minutes. These ten minutes turned into 20, then 30: we really felt that we had something there.
Warner liked the song. We decided to bring Wyman Wong to help us with the lyrics—that was my first time collaborating with such a big lyricist. And MC Cheung obviously brought his touch: it wasn’t about producing a romantic song but a song for his fans. It was so powerful when he sang it for the first time at the Hong Kong Coliseum. We never expected it to be such a hit.”
‘You Gotta Screw Up At Least Once’ by Kiri T
Above Gareth Chan co-produced ‘You Gotta Screw Up At Least Once’ with Kiri T
“I co-produced You Gotta Screw Up At Least Once with Kiri T. I knew I wanted to work on that song the first time I heard the demo, it gave me goosebumps but it was very different at the time. We developed a really ‘cool’ version of it over four sessions—I really appreciated it. She’s a really good music producer herself, and in Hong Kong, it’s not easy to find ‘your sound’ like she does.
But we felt that something was wrong. We ended up deciding to rework it together last minute to make it a Canto ballad. Because this song is so genuine, so simple and so full of feelings, it didn’t need cool complicated arrangements. The rest is history: it won an award at the 2024 Ultimate Song Chart Awards. But to this day, there’s still another version of that song hidden on a computer.”
‘Solitude’ by Ian Chan
Above Gareth Chan produced ‘Solitude’ by Ian Chan
“Working with Ian Chan was really interesting. Thanks to his work with Mirror, he [has] got a really supportive and solid fanbase, which, to me, means that he has a lot more freedom to explore different genres and educate people about them. He was on board with this philosophy.
Solitude is part of a five-song project that he released throughout 2024. In this particular one, we were trying to channel someone going through a mental breakdown. Ian locked himself in his hotel room for three days just to get into the right mood. I told him ‘Just imagine yourself playing the Joker, let yourself be carried by emotions while you’re singing and let your voice fluctuate a lot’. I also asked the musicians with us to play like madmen and to not follow the usual rules of Canto-pop.
This isn’t Ian’s biggest song, but it was one of the most fun ones to record.”
Salomé Grouard was Digital Editor and Front & Female Content Lead at Tatler Hong Kong. Primarily focused on managing Tatler Hong Kong’s digital platform and content, she also covers gender equality, the music scene and sports through interviews with industry leaders, experts and trendsetters.
Interview highlights include renowned conservationist Dr Jane Goodall, Korean actor Park Seo Jun, singer Jorja Smith, Chinese TV host Yue-Sai Kan, YouTuber Kimono Mom, Japanese rapper Awich, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter Mikey Musumeci.
She has also produced stories on revolutionising sexual wellness in Asia, activism within the surfing community, Asian trans musicians reclaiming their narratives through music and looked at the toxicity of gym culture through the lens of the plus-size community. She also covers music festivals, such as Hong Kong’s Clockenflap and Bali’s Suara.
