Toronto-bred producer Frank Dukes (born Adam Feeney) had his fingerprints all over countless smash singles from the 2010s: Drake’s “0 to 100 / The Catch Up”, Camila Cabello’s “Havana” and Post Malone’s “Circles” to name a few. But the downside to being a reliable hit machine is that you might start to feel like a cog on an assembly line. “I arrived at this place as a record producer where I had achieved more than I ever thought I would,” Feeney tells Apple Music. “It was starting to be a game of diminishing returns, and I wasn’t quite as excited about what I was doing.” So, in 2021, Feeney did the unthinkable: He killed Frank Dukes so that a different manifestation of himself, Ging, could live. What’s even more surprising is that he reinvented himself as a purveyor of Beatlesque psychedelic pop, Smashing Pumpkins-style orchestral ballads and reverential Daniel Johnston covers—“all the things that made me first fall in love with music,” he says. Written in the wake of Feeney’s separation from his wife of 10 years, We’re Here, My Dear sees him retreating into the foundational sounds of his youth as a means of addressing his present state. But despite its (unintentional yet apt) evocation of Marvin Gaye’s infamously bitter post-divorce missive, Here, My Dear, Ging’s debut album is a very different kind of breakup record, one that views the end of a relationship as the start of a new phase of platonic love, mutual understanding and harmonious co-parenting with a former partner. “This record is a documentation of a very specific period of my life,” he says, “and I just wanted to find a means of authentic expression for my art. That meant being vulnerable and writing songs and singing them in my voice and letting my story be heard.” Here, Feeney breaks down that story, one track at a time. “We’re Here, My Dear” “This was the first song that I finished writing for the record. Up to that point, I was just exploring making my own art, and I didn’t necessarily know if I was going to write songs or make ambient music. When you do something new, there’s always a question of, ‘Can I even do this?’ And this was the first song that I wrote for the record where I knew that I had arrived at something. It came really quick—I think I wrote it in one sitting in half an hour and recorded an iPhone demo. And it proved to me that I could do it. I wrote the song for my ex-wife about this idea of love evolving and taking a new shape. And the way that the production sort of unfolded, it felt like the intro to a record, and the lyrical sentiment felt like the thesis of the record.” “Dear Boy” “I wrote this song for my son, who was five years old when we went through our divorce, and it was something that he couldn’t really wrap his head around at that time. As a child, he didn’t really understand the language or the concept of love changing and evolving past something that he’s known. That’s why the chorus says, ‘One day, it’ll all make sense’: I’m kind of reassuring him that I see what he’s going through and that, one day, he will understand what has come to be between me and his mother.” “Never Want to Leave” “This is about falling in love with the person I was with after my ex-wife, and, without sounding corny, it’s about the idea that love can transform the way that we see the world and the way that we see ourselves. And even if that love doesn’t last forever, it has a lasting effect. It’s really about that initial period of falling in love—it feels like a dream that you never want to leave. I was listening to a lot of George Harrison, who has such an amazing perspective in his songwriting, where he can touch on ideas of love and spirituality without it feeling forced or contrived. He’s had a huge influence on how I write songs.” “A Reason” “This is about that moment of transition—the opening lyric is ‘I need a reason to go where I belong/I know that it seems wrong/But it’s not treason.’ It’s about feeling alone in a relationship and leaving that relationship. I wrote it on the guitar, and the demo sounded so raw that I just wanted to record it stripped down and really make it about the words. The production is just meant to be seasoning on it. I was really influenced by the textures of Brian Eno—the idea of just putting two or three sounds in it that were the right sounds.” “Miracles” “The first side of the record is rooted in the weight of something as heavy as leaving a marriage of 10 years. And ‘Miracles’ is the sound of the world opening up. I wrote it at this time in my life where I just kept meeting people that were on the cusp of a similar big life transition, and there’s this magic that happens when you look at the signs and lean into them, and you live from that place. I wanted to write something that was life-affirming and aspirational because I truly felt that.” “Can You See Me” “This song is really about how we evolve as people. I wrote about the sentiment of your ex being able to see you as the person you’ve become and not who you once were. It’s this idea that everything, in time, passes. That’s why, on the chorus, I’m singing, ‘When the sun comes down/It comes back around.’ Even if it’s hard, or even if you’re in pain, we always heal and we always come back to a wholeness in some way. It has a little more hopeful perspective on divorce or breakups. But I think you can only arrive there with time and clarity.” “True Love Will Find You in the End” “I love Daniel Johnston’s music so much, and I love the way he sounds singing his music. When I started exploring singing for the first time, I really had to embrace being an amateur and embrace the fact that some of my favourite singers were not technically good singers at all. Daniel Johnston is such a beautiful songwriter and a beautiful creative spirit—he inspired me so much. I knew I wanted to do a cover on this record, and I didn’t know what it was going to be. Then, in October 2020, I was in Toronto finishing the record, and I took a walk, and I saw a sign that said Johnston & Johnston Realty. And in that moment, I thought, ‘I’m going back to the Airbnb where we set up a little studio, and I’m going to cover “True Love Will Find You in the End” because it kind of echoes the sentiment of this record.’” “Above & Below” “The kids were in the other room, and they were taking my furniture and building a slide out of it and going crazy jumping up and down. So, I went into the bathroom with my iPhone and recorded this demo, and in the background was all this madness from the kids...but in this magical way, all the moments where they were speaking were very rhythmic and felt very purposeful to the recording. Originally, I was gonna just put the demo on the record, and then, right before I finished the record, I decided I would at least try to make a produced version of it. I did, and it actually made the song a lot better, but I missed a lot of those special moments where the kids’ voices were coming in. So, I married the two versions together—everywhere the voices come in on the final version is exactly where they come in on the demo.” “When I’m Gone” “When all is said and done, all we have is our relationship with the world around us and the universe, you know? Everything that’s happened in my family, and in my life, is like my puzzle, and we all have our own puzzles, ultimately. And that’s a sentiment that I wanted to end the record with: At the end of the day, this record is really just about my puzzle and how it intertwines with the people around me that I love.”