Global chart-topping singer Allen Ling was in Mumbai last month on his maiden Tour of Asia to promote his new video single Closer. 

Having launched his formal music career only in 2023, the American-Chinese artist has swiftly ascended the music charts with his award-winning 'Heartbreak Trilogy.' Allen’s previous single, Remember, clinched the #1 spot on the World Indie Music and European Indie Music Charts. His collaboration with Flipsyde’s Dave Lopez and the production prowess of Guns N Roses' Brain Bryan Mantia and Melissa Reese, alongside Chris Dugan's engineering magic at Green Day Studios, promises a sonic masterpiece. The new single Closer is produced by the famous youth icon Aramis Knight of Ms. Marvel fame. 

Aside from music, singer-songwriter Ling has had an interesting career as a physical therapist and has worked closely with names such as Pixar Animation Studios and Steve Jobs, as well as the cast and crew of well-known OTT series/TV Shows.

Verus Ferreira met up with Allen Ling and Dave Lopez on their visit to Mumbai, to know more about their musical journey and of course the new single Closer.

Allen, this is your first visit to India. How are you enjoying it? 

Allen: This is my very first visit to India and it's been fabulous so far. It was overwhelming at first because there were so many people in a very small area.But it was also very exciting because all the people are vibrant.  I'm an extrovert, so the more people there are, the happier I am.

Have you heard of our Indian culture? 

Allen: Well, when you go to school in America, you take in world culture. So we've learned about Indian religions and all the amazing amount of diversity in this country. It's not unlike the US, where we have diverse populations and different beliefs. I was surprised to find it somewhat the same, but just different as far as religious beliefs are concerned. The culture here is much older than the US. The US is only 200 something years old. India goes way back. 

What about Indian music? 

Allen: I love the music of Asha Bhosle. Infact my mum, who is 92 years old, listens to her music. I also like the music of Lucky Ali. Music here is very exotic. From what I have heard, it's all over the map, just like our country too. They have folk music and deeply religious music too. But again, it's older.

So coming to your music journey, it was music that healed you from heartbreak. What’s your story?

Allen: Well, I met a young lady at a party and mind you I wasn't online dating. We met, I gave her my business card and surprisingly, she didn't call me until like three months. We had a very nice relationship and I thought we were very compatible. There was a little bit of an age difference, but I think that’s all right. But one day she told me that she didn’t think we should be going out anymore. I was surprised, and like, I asked myself, what did I do wrong? I was trying to figure it out, but I never really got any resolution, so it was very hard on me. To add to that, with social media, it was harder because you get to see everyone else having a good time and I’m not having the same. You're just left out. Infact we were supposed to go on a trip to Hawaii at that time. I told her that I'm would not cancel her plane ticket. I told her that I'll wait for her just in case she changes her mind and even suggest that she could come directly to the airport. So I thought unlike the love stories where the person comes and you reunite, she unfortunately didn't come to the airport (laughs). So again, that was even worse. So here I was on this island, with a few friends and family. It was then that I wrote these songs.

You work full-time as a physical therapist, look after your mum as a caregiver and of course you are also a singer. How do you manage all this?

Allen: It's called delegation. It's not easy to delegate, because if you delegate something to the wrong person, you're in trouble. I've been in the business for decades as a physical therapist. I see almost 15 patients a day. We also have an aquatic therapy program too. We have 17 employees, so I've had really good people that helped me. Dave is one of them. I never delegated Dave, rather we were collaborators.  So you either collaborate or you delegate and so I've been very fortunate that I have been attracted to good people. That's how you make it in the world. 

So you've collaborated with Dave Lopez on songs like Remember, Straight into the Ocean, Closer. How did the meet up with him happen?

Allen: Meeting up with Dave was not about music, it was about comic books. Dave had a lot of history with another very well-established comic book editor and publisher. I was having trouble finishing my first graphic novel when Dave introduced me to Mel Smith. So that's how I really met Dave. We both didn't have music in common and so it was only after Dave had listened to some of my songs, that he showed interest when he said he liked some of my songs. 

Dave: So we became friends through a mutual friend as Allen just said. So Allen actually came to one of our concerts and so actually that’s the first time we really met. I liked some of Allen’s music and the first song I heard was ‘Closer’. This is a really cool song and so that's how it got me interested in him and in his music.  Allen also helped me write a song for my daughter Zoe. I'm really good with melodies, but terrible with words. So Allen came over and he just knocked it out in a few minutes. I play solos and melodies, but for Allen, his lyrics just flow out.  I was so impressed with that and so we decided to work together and become a team. 

Allen: That’s right.

Dave: Initially we were helping other people produce other people’s music. But eventually we decided to get together. So I got my Flipsyde friends, producers, guys that make music, creative people and we started from there.  I like creative people. I only hang out with creative people because it inspires you. Alan is one of them. So here we are now being creative, talking to you, right? 

Allen: The good thing about creative people is we make each other laugh a lot. Dave makes everyone laugh, so it's great.  We both have an inappropriate sense of humor at times, so we will sit there and poke at each other with it.

So Allen, you're American -Chinese. Do you draw any influences from your cultural heritage? 

Allen: My parents were immigrants, and I think they instilled the whole idea of the work ethic in me. It was like, you've got to go to school, you’ve got to go to graduate school, establish yourself in the community and make good on your reputation. I'm a health care provider. I do physical therapy. So they wanted to make sure that I had a respectable profession. They didn't view art as a way of raising a family, because for me, I really loved to draw. I love to draw cartoons and things.  Music was also a passion, but it wasn't something I thought I was ever going to do.

But you did have a band sometime back and recorded about 200 songs.

Allen: Yes, that was sometime back, during my teens I would say. So it was something like a garage band where we practiced most of the time. It was a big band, so we had a horn section, 2 keyboardists, and two female vocalists. I was the singer in the band besides other people. My brother too was in the band. I played into my early 20s and then we stopped. I continued to write music. I always wrote music. So about the songs we recorded, yes we would be using pieces of them, because there were a lot of things I wrote in my youth, but then there was a lot of immaturity in it too. I don’t think the songs were processed as they should have been. I think there was a lot more purity. But if we do the songs, it should be appropriate, just like we did ‘Closer’.

So what's the songwriting process for you and Dave when working on a song? 

Allen: It comes up with an idea first. It has to be like an emotion. Sometimes a word starts, and then from the word comes the hook, and from the hook then comes the verse, and then the bridge.  Sometimes it's last. I sometimes write a song within one hour. 

So how did Aramis Knight of Marvel come on board for the music video, ‘Straight Into the Ocean’? 

Allen: Aramis and I met on the set of the film “Into the Badlands”. As I said before, I'm a physical therapist, so executive producer Daniel Wu invited me to help some of the injured stunt people and actors. Aramis was on the set of “Into the Badlands” and we became friends. During my time there, I told him about the music video I was doing. We went to shoot on location in Kauai and all I can say is that it was a lot of fun. Aramis became the producer and later he became an actor for the first one. We shot the video in shark-infested waters. We didn't know about it at all, until we saw a 10-foot-long tiger shark. I was like, let's get out of the water.

Dave, what's your take on the song ‘Closer’? 

Dave: Well, that's the first song I ever heard of Allen’s That song featured drummer Brain (Bryan Kei Mantia) who has played with bands like Guns N' Roses and Primus. He's a local legend in the Bay Area. So he along with Melissa (Melissa Reese) helped produce the song. So when I heard it, I found it was a timeless song, you could play it for somebody to get married, somebody to graduate, whatever.  It's a song that gives you a special time in your life. My friend Reto Peter, who worked with my band Flipsyde, decided to give it a little bit of a different feel. If you hear the original version, it has a little electric guitar, so I added a lot of acoustic feel to it. I feel what makes that song special is the strings.  Those strings come right out of the speakers. So on the production of the new version of the song, I used a 12-string.  I just complimented what was there. So at the end, I felt I could do a really cool solo. 

Allen, the music video of ‘Closer’ has two renditions. 

Allen: Well, the first rendition was the longest one which is like nine and a half minutes. It's like a short film. It was actually Aramis' idea and mine to have a little movie, but his idea was like, let's make fun of Hollywood directors, the fact that they're on drugs and all the other stuff. My idea was totally different. So I left it up to the director and Aramis. So while I did the creation part, they went ahead and gave it a new dimension. Someone once asked me what I actually contributed to that music video? I said that besides producing it, I put on a tuxedo, nice shoes and had ballerinas in the music video. They did everything else and so when I showed up, they just drove me to the set and the rest was history. 

So what genre would you like to put your music in?

Allen: I'm more pop in a sense, but also alternative adult contemporary. My stuff is very ballad oriented, but we do have faster songs that are very pop oriented.

Dave, your band Flipsyde played in India in 2022 in Dambuk, Arunachal Pradesh. What was the response coming back to India?

Dave: We performed at the Orange Music Festival. India has been such a great place for Flipsyde because in other countries, it’s different. Here people appreciate art, they appreciate good music. They know the lyrics, the music. It was like thousands of kids going crazy. Someday is such a powerful song, the kids here know it so well. I always go on YouTube or Instagram, Tik Tok, and I always see kids playing the Someday solo. They usually are from India and they're playing my solo. I get so moved by it. I also remember being on the stage watching a bunch of Indian musicians performing. I'm like, these guys are so good. After our show, the kids are waiting to meet and talk to you. It’s great to leave an influence on somebody. It's a big honor for me and I think India is unlike anywhere else in the world. You guys like musicianship, and that's the thing about Flipsyde, we always have guitar solos. India appreciates that and India appreciates the lyrical content too. We always have a song about hope, we're never negative. We always wanted to make people's lives better.

So what’s happening with the band? Are you in touch with the members of the band?

Dave: Flypside is like a marriage, you have people getting divorced. If I do Flipsyde again, it'll be a different version of it. It won't be the same Flipsyde. It's a monster, you surely don’t want to hear that, do you (Laughs). I was pretty much retired from music till Alan inspired me to play again. So I'm focusing more on producing, recording and everything else. Piper and I are very close alongwith Reto Peter who did the first album and all our music. So we're thinking about doing something. If we do come back, it will be a different, new Flipsyde.

Any new songs you are working on?

Dave: Yes, it’s a song called ‘Fall in your Arms’, it hasn't come out yet, it’s one of my favorite songs. It's like a mature version of Foo Fighters. It's an old song that Allen had. We’ve just reworked it and so it will be out soon. We always have ideas. I mean I have stuff on my phone. You just never know we could write a song even today. You never know where inspiration comes from, we’re just antennas to whatever is coming, but there's a lot more songs coming out.

Interviewed by Verus Ferreira