Ayen 何璟昕 a new Cantonese singer I started to listen

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She actually sing in Cantonese, Mandarin and English. Her Chinese name is 何璟昕 or He Jing’xin in Pin’yin. In Cantonese, 阿昕 sounds a bit like 阿音 or Ayen in English. Both her parents are teachers when she grew up. In fact I saw her mom on this YT video (lovely mom/daughter pair, to say the least).

Here is her wikipedia 何璟昕 (Chinese) Ayen Ho (English). I made some small contribution to her Wiki pages recently. I don’t know how many fans or potential fans reading Wikipedia, btw. Maybe not a ton.

Music industry

The landscape of digital music is overly fragmented, in my opinion. For example, in China it appears QQ音乐 and 网易云音乐 (Ayen何璟昕 on 网易云音乐) are popular. In the west Spotify and Apple Music are two largest platforms. Personally, I used mostly YT and YT Music as I have YT Premium Sub. Then there are the social media platforms: which are also fragmented, obviously.

Keep in mind in last 10 years or so, the music industry has experienced seismic shift – music is increasingly being streamed online, instead of the good old days of CD, or singles sales. I think it may have something impact on Ayen 何璟昕’s journey becoming a musician/song writer/singer. She does have one advantage: her undergraduate major is digital media – and we can see some of her work in the MV (music video) she created.

I still remember the days at Best Buy there are racks and racks of CDs on display, it was probably 15 or 20 years ago. Both our 2012 Toyota Camry and 2012 Toyota Sienna still had CD player build in – both has bluetooth and USB too, so it can be connected to smartphone.

Some social media and music platforms for Ayen 何璟昕

Bilibili: this is probably one of the most popular video platform in China. I assume Douyin is similar.

微博 : she has quite a few songs on her Weibo, but this one (not music, about how to stay away from online fraud) caught my attention today – 我这么谨慎的人，居然也差点被骗20万… (personally I felt bad for her, but it seems like just something happens quite often nowadays, and I will talk about it sometime in the near future).

She is on WeChat (Wei Xing) and Red Note (Xiao Hong Shu) too – you should be able to search her name 何璟昕 and find her there.

油管 aka YouTube

Facebook || Instagram

Some of her original work (compose, lyrics or both)

何璟昕 Ayen【向光性 Phototropism】原創音樂 官方高畫質 Official HD MV: she actually wrote this song when she was about 17 (year 2011) – 独立音乐人何璟昕：向光飞舞的风筝. She made an album with the same tile in year 2016: the album actually has more than 3 songs as shown in this YT playlist. I will update if/when I find the complete playlist.

如果今天天氣正好 (Cantonese, 2020, started in 2014)

長大的歌 (Cantonese, 2020)

一切美好都像你 (2020, Mandarin, you will notice she sung this song once every year at outdoor place and recorded and showed it to all – a cute idea Btw, official MV is here: it has lyrics too.

(腾讯音乐 via SoundCloud) 我想在九月的某一天去找你 (2024, Lyrics at Boomplay). Or you can listen via Spotify here. This song reminds me of Ai Jing, and her song 艾敬 Ai jing【我的1997】Official Music Video. There was another Ayen’s song reminds me of Ai Jing too – this one – 何璟昕 Ayen【安放自己的地方 Where to place myself】原創音樂 官方高畫質 Official HD MV. Btw, I just learned Ai Jing lives in the USA now – 「1997快些到吧」歌手艾敬 华丽转身艺术实践者.

Some of her recent work and other songs I like

放手以后 via YT (网易云音乐, 2024) – lyrics available at boomplay; Author/Composer: Carlos’ Instagram

I believe I subscribed and listened to her singing in the past (I just searched YT history and it appears I watched/listened her song on 11-Feb-2024 first). This was the song – 陳慧嫻 – 飄雪 Acoustic cover｜粵語歌吉他彈唱｜廣東孩子看到雪忍不住的cover！｜Ayen何璟昕 I think the song should be familiar with old timers like me. Btw, she also has a lot of cover (翻唱）songs. Here is her own YT playlist (it has 204 songs as of 03-21-2025).

But I listened to her a lot in last week or so. I listened to her new song 时间不等你 (2024) #粤语歌 many times (I put lyrics in the end both for my Cantonese learning and blog formatting purposes)

YT: 粵語民謠「四季歌」女生版 Acoustic cover 生活需要一些安靜｜粵語歌吉他彈唱｜Ayen何璟昕 . For lyrics refer to 四季歌 (Si Ji Ge)

I don’t know about you, but to me this song reminds me 粤语更接近文言文.

翻唱 (cover, or acoustic cover), Playlists etc.

I also created a few Playlists on YT such as this one – Ayen阿昕原创+新歌

I just noticed she has some playlists on YT too: such as this one – Ayen cover 何璟昕的翻唱

Also note, she pretty much managed all her creative activities by herself, this is from composing, lyrics, graphic design, photography, videography, editing, sound, and managing her social media and music platforms. She explained it here – Q&A｜關於我的50問（下）50 facts about me 感情經歷/團隊/生活觀念/未來規劃/學吉他/作曲專業讀研日常/面對孤獨/成長感悟 | Ayen 何璟昕

Some old videos

Between 2014 and 2017, she debuted or sang quite a few Cantonese, Mandarin and English songs, mainly using her own acoustic guitar or ukulele as accompanying instruments，and posted some of the videos on Sohu.com, and more specialized website such as yueqixuexi.com too.

A side note

When I was listening to her music both via YT and YT Music, as I switch between them as I was trying to conserve some data usage (partially because I lost power and Wi-Fi a few days ago). I noticed that YT Music is sometimes automatically generated by YouTube (Google), for example this channel. More on YouTube automation here.

《時間不等你》

作詞：陳鈺海
作曲：石羽函
編曲：梁雨森
演唱：何璟昕

老友重聚未趕到
像片好似 缺失拼圖
日後再見 無言生疏
空隙不可再填補
為何承諾做不到
與她失約 這生旅途
從前事太忙 到有空以後
卻沒有她擁抱
誰在等等 不知所措
又再等等 寫上句號
神未會在意
任你內疚痛苦 的禱告

時間 不會在等你
不會在倒退
有天醒覺 掛念著誰
若有下一次 又再可相對
記得虧欠的心碎
時間 不會在等你
失去便失去
你要輓救也不許
回頭尚欠了 幾個諾言
你可 找得到根據

孩童無助地哭訴
你總感到 耳邊太嘈
事業太遠 為何身邊
關心都不會目睹
霎眼至親便蒼老
再飛不到 遠方旅途
抬頭沒有人 要說的說話
你共哪位傾訴
明日怎麼 都不知道
但有今天 可以愛慕
如若領悟到
願你別似昨天 般虛耗

時間 不會在等你
不會在倒退
有天醒覺 掛念著誰
若有下一次 又再可相對
記得虧欠的心碎
時間 不會在等你
失去便失去
你要輓救也不許
回頭尚欠了 幾個諾言
你可 找得到根據
別要 等到回憶里
等到夢境里
有天心痛 你又為誰
願意用一切 換最初一秒
說出虧欠的一句
直到 當眼淚崩潰
當了無生趣
世界化作那飛灰
才明白愛意 都有限時
別要 等一天失去
如還幸有愛 請你及時
別要 等一天追悔

Also, just realized this is the 2nd article I wrote about Chinese singer, here is the 1st – From the unfriendly comments on Liang Jingru aka Fish Leong

PS: 我在国外这样使用网易云音乐 | Using Neteast Cloud Music Abroad | HONGFEI Z. Btw, using this new Chrome Extension NetEaseMusicWorld++, the old one “NetEaseMusicWorld+” is no longer available on Chrome Web Store. Personally I felt this is better/lighter weight than using the VPN which has more implications. Note you will still register on the platform in order to listen to the music there: personally I used my WeChat to register/login.

I also installed both QQ 音乐 and 网易云音乐 mini program on my WeChat. I’ve used quite a bit of QQ 音乐 and liked it.