melatonin boy’s Playlist of Reckless Youth

melatonin boy describes “could you call me tonight"?” as an EP that “captures my musical journey since I was a teenager making beats in school to the knowledge I have now.” 

Two days before melatonin boy headlined his first show at Toronto’s Drake Underground, the 20 year-old finished his year-end exams. 

“After the show, it was a snap moment,” he told me this week over Zoom. “I thought, ‘Wow I just had my first headlining show. People came out to see me. I was in the spotlight and now I’m in my friend’s car driving 2 hours back home.’” 

The next day, he was back to doing laundry in his apartment. 

The show, he said proudly, was a huge success: They sold out the venue. He co-headlined with BNZA, a friend from Toronto who melatonin boy met when they opened for another Canadian artist named Russell. 

“It’s pretty surreal to see people are willing to come out to see me as an artist. I thought I’d have more openings before I could have a headline show,” he recalled and added, “I was pretty caught off guard when they offered it to me.”

But at the rate of melatonin boy’s career trajectory, this headlining show is only the beginning. On Friday he released his first EP “could you call me tonight?”, an EP that he says revists the music he loved growing up. But it also signifies a departure: melatonin boy is eager to establish his own sound and brand, away from the “Keshi-clone” label he clowns himself with on social media. He’s more than that – and he wants to use 2023 to prove this. 

The singer is used to these dualities: By day he’s a college student studying psychology, but at night melatonin boy makes the kind of confessional music that strikes hardest when you’re alone. This music is integral to his persona, even down to his stage name which he coined in July 2021 during a string of poorly slept nights. 

“I didn’t wanna use my real name because there are artists with my real name and they are far bigger than I am,” he said with a laugh. Then explained, “I had a really bad sleep schedule at the time, so I was taking a lot of melatonin to help me reset my cycle.” He added “boy” to melatonin, against some of his friends’ advice, and thought it sounded memorable, if not quirky. 

“It stands out,” he told me. “I was thinking about how a lot of these artists release sad music that hits the hardest at that 1 am period when you’re alone, laying in bed and you’re ruminating.” 

melatonin boy wants his music to have the same calming effect on his listeners. “The idea was, instead of taking melatonin to help you relax,” he said with a slight laugh, “you’d listen to me instead.”

“I think my artistry is a great mix of where I come from in Hong Kong as well as stuff I've seen while I was in Canada,” melatonin boy said.

melatonin boy is a product of Hong Kong. This surprises a lot of people who meet him. 

“I’m actually not from Canada at all,” he told me when I asked where home is. “I only came to Canada in 2021 right after I established melatonin boy.” 

In Hong Kong, melatonin boy attended an international school where he learned English. He’s the most fluent in his family for this reason, he told me. “I will always acknowledge how privileged I am to have these opportunities,” he added. 

Coming to Canada has been enriching for melatonin boy, specifically because he hopes he can share his culture with Western audiences. “I grew up watching a lot of Western videos on YouTube,” he said. “But I think my artistry is a great mix of where I come from in Hong Kong, which is something I don’t think a lot of people have seen before, as well as stuff I've seen while I was in Canada.” 

He’s right: Aside from Jackson Wang, there are no music superstars from Hong Kong. But melatonin boy’s ease of understanding and adapting to trends makes him a formidable contender to represent home to an international audience. 

“Coming to Canada, I feel like I have more of an opportunity to get an audience and move it back to Hong Kong in a full circle moment,” he explained. 

melatonin boy began making music when he was 15 years-old. In school, he was asked to choose between a class in visual art, drama or music.”I wasn’t a big fan of music, but a lot of students in my grade chose drama. [My teachers] saw that I had a somewhat musical background because I used to play classical piano,” he remembered.

He was placed in music class where he learned how to produce music. That class became one of his most memorable experiences. “My friends and I were so competitive with each other trying to make cool beats,” he said. While his friends moved on, he continued to make music even after the class was over. 

Looking back, melatonin boy is largely embarrassed of the music he made in those years. “That keeps me humble,” he joked, but by the time he was 17, melatonin boy was producing music he thought had potential to be popular. 

As privileged as melatonin boy was to attend international school, he would have likely never come this far without social media. “I think if I were making music ten years ago when it was necessary to fly to cities like LA or NYC,” he said. “I would not stand a chance at all because I would not have the money to go there.” 

Attention came rapidly for melatonin boy on social media. “Fast forward another three years to today, he said. “I never expected I’d be here.”

“could you call me tonight?” is melatonin boy’s first EP. It allows the singer to look back at his youth before moving on to his next era.

Want to know what’s on melatonin boy’s mind? Listen to his new EP “could you call me tonight?” which tracks his artistic evolution since he was making beats in Hong Kong. 

“The EP is like a playlist or collection of tunes about the reality behind teenage love,” he described to me. “It captures my musical journey since I was a teenager making beats in school to the knowledge I have now.” 

There’s no cohesive storytelling to this album. Instead, it resembles the playlists that are a mashup of thoughts, feelings, and fears – all of which melatonin boy hopes young listeners will relate to. And even if listeners aren’t in college or high school, “I hope they’ll use the EP as a way to reminisce how naive we all were before.”

“Breathe”, the lead single, is a track “that’s inspired by artists I grew up with that I love, like Lauv and 1975. It’s music that you don’t really hear from my recent tracks,” melatonin boy said. 

“The EP mostly focuses on youthful recklessness. It documents what a lot of teenagers feel as they’re entering college,” he explained. 

While writing the album, he thought about the lies we're told when we’re growing up: That we’ll stay close to childhood friends; that we’ll stay together with our high school sweetheart; or that we can even protect our heart from getting hurt.  “But in reality the world doesn’t work that way,” he said wisely. “The world is really harsh.” 

“could you call me tonight?” is a turning point for melatonin boy. The EP brings closure to his teenage youth while making way for the artist he’s evolving into. “When I was creating this EP, I was also preparing for the future. I’m grabbing inspiration from the music I listen to and the music from my past,” he said. “I’m trying to find the perfect blend.” 

In the meantime, melatonin boy hopes that this EP connects with audiences. He’s lucky, he says, because he has a good group of friends who are artists and musicians. They all believe in him, and he’s even seen a few friends in his circle start to blow up on social media. His time will come too. Just a few years ago, he remembered, the only people listening to his music were friends and family. “But now,” he said, “I have an audience waiting for me to drop music.” 

“I just have to keep my head down, keep doing what I’m doing,” he said with a slight rise in his voice to mark the anticipation, “until one day, I hit the algorithm really well.”