North Vancouver teacher /rugby coach/musician Mark Fortin finds himself with newfound success this week after a song he co-wrote is No. 1 on the Hong Kong pop charts.
The Lynnmour resident wrote “All About Love” with Coquitlam native Charles Huntley for Hong Kong pop star Eason Chan and the result immediately shot to the top of iTunes in Hong Kong.
Fortin was surprised when Huntley called him from Hong Kong to share the news. Huntley told him that in Hong Kong songs don’t usually stay at the top for long since people usually “listen to it once and they won’t listen to it again.”
“It’s definitely never happened to me as a songwriter, I’ve seen successes but not like that so it was great,” Fortin says.
Huntley, who plays the saxophone, flute and piano, grew up in Coquitlam but moved to Hong Kong in 2004 after meeting his wife. He’s performed with many Chinese artists, including Chan, who he’s been working with on his L.O.V.E album, which is an introduction to the project Eason and The Duo Band.
“From what I understand it’s a bit of a departure for Eason Chan, to sing in Cantonese is a departure and also the tone of the record is less pop and a little bit more heartfelt,” says Fortin. “He left his record company, for him to release this song and this record, Charlie said artistically, it was a big deal for him to do this.”
A year ago, Huntley asked Fortin to write a song for Chan that had a “The Beach Boys meets Beatles, meets Michael Buble” sound. He wrote the original music and English lyrics and Huntley added the bridge and created a pop arrangement.
“My concept for the song was ‘It’s All about Love’, which was kept for the title as well as the spirit of the album,” Huntley told the North Shore News in an email. “The Cantonese lyrics are about the experiences the band had as a family and are quite different from the original lyrics.”
Aside from being a singer and songwriter, Fortin is also a shop teacher at Sutherland Secondary and coaches the senior rugby team. With the song’s popularity he hopes to take his music career further and plans to go to China this August to meet Chan, possibly to do more songwriting.
“It’s great because it inspires me to continue but it also gives me opportunity to write more, possibly for Eason and other people,” he says over the phone while driving a van full of Sutherland Sabres.
A couple of years ago, Chan and Huntley played a concert in Vancouver and Fortin says he had no idea how huge of an artist Chan was until he was in that concert along with 30,000 people.
“They sold out Rogers Arena for three nights,” he says.
Fortin explains that due to the lack of copyright laws in China, he doesn’t make any money on the hit song. Nevertheless, he’s happy for the opportunity and sees this as a way to re-spark his love for songwriting.
“The hope would be that yes I can make more money, but it’s opportunities and experience,” says Fortin.
Now the music video for “All About Love” has more than 93,000 views on YouTube.
