13 years on and Hong Kong band Dear Jane are still punks at heart
Pop-punk band Dear Jane reveal the ups and downs of their 13-year career and how they’re trying to change the industry from the inside
The posters have started going up around the city for Dear Jane’s upcoming shows in September and their fans are getting excited. Having released three well-received singles earlier this year, the four-piece pop rock outfit are riding a wave of mainstream success that has garnered millions of hits on YouTube, and a status usually reserved for hot newcomers to the music scene.
However, these boys are far from novices – Dear Jane formed in 2003 – and it took more than a few shaky years experimenting with not just their own music, but the Hong Kong audience, to get to where they are now.
Dear Jane’s original line-up consisted of Tim Wong, Adam Diaz, Howie Yung and Jackal Ng, who all met through various underground and music scenes. Their early aspiration was to emulate the angst-ridden punk rock sound emerging from late-1990s North America, a fact which might be new to current fans.
“In Hong Kong, it’s hard to find people who like American rock music as there’s a huge British rock culture,” says Yung. “I think we met up and formed because we were the only four who liked that type of music among our friends – we wanted to make punk rock, but change it so it would be a Chinese kind of rock, a second wave of ’90s pop punk.”
However, Yung and his bandmates quickly realised that the musical palate of Hongkongers was distinctly different to what they were used to. (Half of the members have a US or Canadian upbringing.) They faced difficulties in gaining fans after the release of their first album, 100, in 2006.
