“My most memorable moment from the last five years was the day I decided to become a full-time singer, because that was never in my plans,” moon tang tells Apple Music. “Looking back, it’s clear that my every decision was fraught with uncertainty. But I pressed onward to make it to where I am today.” Just 20 when she wrote her first song, “Get Lost”, during a stay in Copenhagen, the Hong Kong-based singer-songwriter devotes her debut album to the surprises and self-discovery that adulthood brings. “As a child, I imagined I’d be carefree and mature at age 25,” she sings on “25圓舞曲” [“moon waltz op. 25”]. For tang, that milestone turns out to be both liberating and complicated, with maturity not guaranteed. She sums up the bilingual album in three words: “Calm, free, honest.” A host of collaborations—from Serrini contributing lyrics to “戀人絮語” [“fragments d'un discours amoureux”] to Marf Yau making “grwm” a delightful duet—take tang’s dreamy, lo-fi aesthetic in new directions. “I discovered that different musicians understand my vocal qualities in different ways, so each song adopts a different performance approach,” she says. As a result, “favourite jeans” gains a neo-soul and R&B flavour thanks to American musician Sam Ock, while indie artist Gordon Flanders brings his knack for quiet textures to album closer “夜闌人靜” [“moon night sonata”]. Producer and songwriter Nic Tsui, a collaborator on a number of tang’s previous singles, is credited on the bulk of the tracks. “This is the first full album we’ve done together—theme, concept, organisation and so forth,” tang says. “Linking songs to tell a story through music was a new experience for me. We paid a lot of attention to lyrics and arrangements.” One of these stories—told on “戀人絮語”, “房屋供應問題” [“housing problem”] and “趁你旅行時搬走” [“getaway”]—is the loose arc of a romance in which emotional needs run up against living arrangements and other practical concerns. “I’m cool with my time”, she sings on “hair”, a contemplative R&B cut that raises worries only to calmly dismiss them. It’s an approach to life that has served tang well, whatever life throws her way. “That ready-for-anything outlook has led me down a wonderful path,” the artist declares. “I look forward to the transformations the next five years will bring.”