Markie Thompson, a transgender woman and song writer from Liverpool, has seen a song she co-wrote hit number one in the charts in Japan.

Markie works with music publisher Ocelot Music Publishing: Ocelot specialises in placing songs with Asian record labels and genres like Kpop and Cpop. Ocelot contacted Markie, stating they were looking for songs for a Japanese male actor turned solo artist, Akira Takano. The email asked for a catchy pop song with funk and R&B elements, similar to Michael Jackson's Off The Wall album.

Markie Thompson

Markie contacted some contacts in the United States to assist: firstly, a music producer called Exale, based in Boston, and friend and Brooklyn-based songwriter Spencer. Both agreed! So they set to work liaising over Zoom, writing melodies, composing the structure and tweaking the production.

As a writer, I'm very particular about melody. I'm not happy unless I've created something that gets stuck in your head. The hookier, the better! Hooks are my speciality. When we had finished writing the lyrics, Spencer recorded the demo vocal on the track, and it sounded great! Exhale then mixed the song, and we emailed it over to the A&R (Artists & Repertoire), and they loved it! We then received the news that Akira's record label wanted him to record and release the song, so we were all really excited!

The next stage was to send all of the music files over to the label for them to record Akira's vocals on the track. A few months passed, and they received an email about the release date, saying that the song would be the lead single from his next project and that a music video had been shot for it.

The song and music video were released two weeks later, and it went to number one in Japan!

The Album

It's always lovely having an artist release a song you've written - creating something that becomes a part of their discography and musical history. Having the song not only enter the charts but sit at number one was a brilliant start to the year for me!