To most Australians, the name Tamas Wells does not ring a bell.
But it’s a different story in China, where his music has been a ringtone on peoples’ phones.
The 49-year-old academic from Melbourne never sought a career in music, but has always loved writing and recording it with mates.
His earlier years performing were spent in Melbourne’s pub scene.
But in 2009, a Japanese label unexpectedly picked up his album, A Plea en Vendredi, followed by a Chinese label.
One song, Valder Fields, became wildly popular.
Wells had just moved to Myanmar as an aid worker when he accepted an invitation to perform in China.
At his first China gig in Beijing, he was shocked to discover he had serious fans.
“There were a thousand people there who were singing along,” Wells said.
“That was really bizarre.”
The song got more attention in 2019 when it was performed by contestants on TV show, The Voice China.
Wells has toured multiple times over the past 15 years performing in Japan, Singapore and China, as well as France.
The latest was in April to Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Hangzhou.
‘Oh my god it’s Tamas Wells’
Wells’s life in Melbourne is usually very separate to his overseas music fame.
Having earned a PhD in Burmese politics, he’s a researcher and teacher at The University of Melbourne’s School of Social and Political Sciences.
Music has never been a career focus, but a passion fitted in around academia and family life.
Wells has kept his Asian stardom so separate to life in Melbourne that his two teenage daughters had been unaware of the extent of it until the latest tour.
They’d only seen him playing music at home, where they would sometimes ask him to shut up because they couldn’t hear the TV, Wells said.
When the 13 and 15-year-olds attended their father’s Tokyo show they admitted they’d “underestimated Dad’s music”.
The surprise at Wells’s double identity goes in reverse for Chinese international students at the University of Melbourne however, when they unexpectedly bump into a singer whose music was part of the soundtrack to their adolescence.
“Most classes I teach I would have someone who would come up at the end and say, ‘Can I get a photo or an autograph?'” Wells said.
Student Ash Wu first heard Wells’s music when she was 13 years old and was in disbelief when she realised he was on staff at her university.
“Wow, he’s a teacher. I thought he was just a musician,” she said.
His music has soothed her during challenging times and his songs feel “like a very close friend”, Ms Wu said.
Meeting Wells on campus grounds recently, Ms Wu came prepared with gifts for him and his band and printed fan comments from Chinese social media she’d translated into English.
These included a cancer sufferer who said the hit song Valder Fields had helped him accept his illness, while others said they associated the song with their first love.
University of Melbourne student Helen Zhang had Valder Fields as her phone ringtone during high school and was “so surprised” to discover that her teacher was the singer of that song.
Ms Zhang filmed Wells during one of her classes last year and made a widely viewed TikTok video about her “handsome” teacher, which she said had given her 1,000 extra followers.
A common theme among Wells’s Chinese fans is that his low-fi, pared-back sound and emotional lyrics are soothing.
University of Melbourne student Vincent Wu, who also had Valder Fields as his ringtone as teenager, said Wells’s music had a calming effect on him.
“Many people in China have a lot of pressure and his songs make my heart become very quiet and very comfortable,” he said.
Wells’s side gig as a singer is not widely known to others, particularly his academic colleagues, who only discover his alter ego by accident, if, for example, they witness an impromptu fan photo.
“I was talking to a senior academic and someone walked past and said, ‘Oh my god it’s Tamas Wells, can I have a photo?'”, Wells said.
The student got his colleague to take a photo then ran off, leaving the colleague bewildered.
Music streaming in the 2010s
Wells’s music found an audience in China at a pivotal moment technologically and culturally.
Mathew Daniel, the international vice-president of NetEase Cloud Music — Wells’s record label — said an influx of international music into China coincided with the opening up of the internet in the early 2010s.
“Music licensing was still in its infancy and there was not much chronology or context to what was available to the Chinese audience,” he said.
Having a viral hit came with no financial benefit to Wells initially but that has changed over the years as the industry has grown.
NetEase Cloud Music, an equivalent to Spotify and one of China’s main music streaming platforms, has signed numerous foreign artists in the last decade who don’t have much of a following in their home country.
Wells has about 200,000 followers on his NetEase account, which his tour promoter Ye De Xiong said was a key statistic he relied on when approaching Wells to manage the latest tour.
“Tamas is a very special case because he may not be very famous in his town in Australia, but he is quite famous in China,” Mr Ye said.
Fame ‘doesn’t sit naturally’
Seven tours to China later and Wells seems no less baffled by the phenomenon of his China fame than when it first hit.
“I’m not someone who’s been seeking to have a huge audience, so it doesn’t sit that naturally with me,” he said.
“I just love writing songs. I’ve got a hundred songs on my phone — just song ideas that I’ve been writing.
“I’ll probably just continue to do that whatever happens.”