Music runs in Thể Thiên’s blood. Born in Montreal and raised in Ho Chi Minh City, also known as Saigon, the 26-year-old breakout pop star happens to come from one of Vietnam’s most iconic musical families. His late uncle, wartime composer Trịnh Công Sơn, captured the romance and soul of a nation in turmoil through melancholy bolero ballads. His mother, Trịnh Vĩnh Trinh, is likewise an accomplished singer.
In early 2024, Thể Thiên became Vietnam’s first artist to be signed to Universal Music Group’s global division without any prior music released. And in December, he unveiled his debut album ‘Trần Thế’, a breakup-driven dance pop record inspired in part by Saigon club music. After a week, the album had risen to the Number Two spot on Apple Music Vietnam. Now, nearly two months into his debut, he’s nearing 150,000 monthly listeners on Spotify and garnered millions of views on TikTok.
“It happened so fast – all the fans and all the love has been amazing,” Thể Thiên tells NME between sips of iced coffee the morning after performing at a local music festival. “But I’m still learning how to talk to the audience. When you’re on stage, it’s a 1-minute interaction. What do you say? That’s the biggest challenge for me. I still don’t feel like people want to hear what I have to say yet.”
“The album is just the story of my stroll in the mortal world – and sin is something all humans go through”
Taking the spotlight is somewhat new to Thể Thiên who, before becoming Vietnam’s most exciting new pop artist, was primarily known for his work as a sought-after stylist under the moniker Tigrebia. But he says fashion was never the end game. He’s always known he wanted to be a singer.
“Styling just fell into place when I moved back to Vietnam, but after four years, I was done with dressing people,” he recalls of his initial years after returning from university in Canada. “I’ve had this dream to be a singer for over 10 years. My family knew it’s what I wanted. They supported it, too.”
But according to Thể Thiên, it wasn’t until 2022 that he decided to finally make music his focus, realising that at 26, “realistically, I was getting a bit old to start for the first time in the entertainment industry. So I knew I needed to do it. I had to prove something to myself.”
To this end, ‘Trần Thế’ is an honest and fantastical manifesto – of finding heartbreak, chasing the thrills of Saigon nightlife and coming of age between two cultures and languages. Thể Thiên says he wanted his debut album to be a thematic contradiction. “I wanted to write sad lyrics for party music.”
Sonically, ‘Trần Thế’ fuses disparate influences from Thể Thiên’s favourite genres like hyperpop, UK garage and South African amapiano. He also credits artists like NewJeans and Charli XCX for inspiration – but explains that much of the album’s sound was ultimately developed organically in the studio with veteran local producers Onionn and Pixel Neko. “Most of this album was just us fucking around on the internet.”
Particularly notable is the album’s liberal channeling of vinahouse, a ubiquitous local genre that developed in the early 2000s from the influence of Eastern European hard bass. Characterised by high BPMs, pulsing rhythms, and hypnotic synth lines, vinahouse is sometimes dismissed as lowbrow street music.
“I started out hating vinahouse,” Thể Thiên acknowledges. “But the more research I did, the more I realised it’s actually so good – you just have to understand and use the right sounds. Vietnamese people love vinahouse. All the biggest artists use it in their concerts.”
Centering Vietnamese art and sound across eras has always been central to Thể Thiên’s work. As a stylist, he designed sets inspired by lên đồng, a colorful Vietnamese folk ritual that involves going into a medium-induced trance. Now, on one of the album’s most intriguing tracks, ‘Zoo’, he sings a pre-chorus in ca trù – a twangy northern Vietnamese vocal style popularised by geisha-like royal court entertainers – before accelerating into a vinahouse-laced rap hook.
“I wanted ‘Zoo’ to feel crazy, like a ‘break out of prison’ vibe,” he explains. “At that point, I was feeling over-scrutinised by my friends – like everyone was watching me and looking at me sideways. So I just shut the world out. I would make music with Onionn until 9am, sleep all afternoon, and then do it all again the next day.”
“People will always have something to say when my uncle’s music is involved”
Thể Thiên’s personal approach to storytelling stands out in the Vietnamese music industry, much of which remains conservative in content. Since the album’s release, Thể Thiên says he’s also faced online criticism for mixing English and Vietnamese lyrics in the same sentence, but says he wanted to be true to “the way we actually speak”, noting that slipping in and out of both languages is common for many Vietnamese who have lived abroad. And he also cheekily addresses questions on social media about his sexuality: “It’s not like I’m hiding anything: it’s all right there in the lyrics.”
Meanwhile, the album’s title ‘Trần Thế’ derives from the full name given to Thể Thiên by his uncle: “Trần Thế Thể Thiên” roughly translates to “a heavenly object in the mortal world”. This in turn partially inspired the album’s loose concept: each of its main tracks matches one of the seven deadly sins. “It’s not about glorifying sin,” Thể Thiên explains. “The album is just the story of my stroll in the mortal world – and sin is something all humans go through.”
Despite a playful irreverence towards his own flaws and contradictions, Thể Thiên carefully integrates his family’s legacy into his work in ways that are honest yet respectful. The album’s English-language outro track, for instance, looks back toward the city of Hue, the former imperial capital of Vietnam and his family’s ancestral home. The dance track ‘Out4blood’ features lyrics from his older brother and another melancholy ballad, ‘hồn trai’, uses vocals courtesy of his mother.
But the unexpected highlight of the album has been its minute-long interlude, in which Thể Thiên’s covers part of his uncle’s classic love song, ‘Diễm Xưa’. Known for its intricate Vietnamese metaphors, the song has long been considered difficult to translate, yet remains one of Trịnh Công Sơn’s most famous compositions. Thể Thiên’s version preserves the haunting beauty of the original while layering subtle electronic beats and atmospheric synths, transforming it into something both nostalgic and contemporary.
“I knew it had to be this song,” Thể Thiên says. “We all debated it for weeks, but I told my manager I didn’t care how people reacted. People will always have something to say when my uncle’s music is involved.”
Yet even he was unprepared for the overwhelmingly positive response. After countless requests from fans, he says he now plans to re-record it: “It wasn’t supposed to be a single, but now we’re working on releasing it properly.”
Indeed, the track’s success speaks not only to the timelessness of Trịnh Công Sơn’s artistry but to Thể Thiên’s voice and creative vision: one that bridges past and present, honouring tradition while pushing Vietnamese music into the future. With ‘Trần Thế’, he isn’t just paying homage to his family’s legacy: he’s now earning his own place within it.
Thể Thiên’s ‘Trần Thế’ is out now via Universal Music.
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