Denis Santos
Genius collaboration
Darren Espanto is known for being one of the successful products of entire The Voice franchise in the Philippines. Bagging top hits and awards under his name, Darren, for sure, has a lot of surprises in store for us. For this year, expect him to be doing exciting collaborations for the deluxe edition of his second album titled Be With Me.
One of his new materials is the project involving Nik Qistina, the Malaysian wonder. Nik started her career by posting random videos and her music on YouTube. This caught the attention of Universal Music Malaysia. She did not stop since getting signed. At a young age, she was able to perform with famous artists such as American singer-songwriter Greyson Chance. Moreover, she has performed in different prestigious venues all over Malaysia.
Working with Nik
For Darren and Nik’s collaboration, they produced 2 beautiful songs. One for Darren’s album, and another for Nik’s upcoming EP. The duo made a new rendition of Darren’s “My Baby and Me”, and a stripped-down version of Nik’s hit single “Young Hearts”.
“I wanted to do an acoustic version of ‘Young Hearts’ with someone who loves the song as much as I do,” Nik says. “I was really honored to find out that [Darren] felt that way about it, too. Afte I listened to Darren’s breakthrough hit ‘Stuck’, I was conviced he was the perfect person to sing with on an acoustic version of ‘Young Hearts’,” she follows.
On Darren’s end, he admitted that he enjoyed doing the song because it allowed him to grow as an artist.
“For me, collaborating on this new version of ‘Young Hearts’ with Nik is something out of the box because I’m used to always belting and keeping my energy high when I perform, but on this song, I got to show my more chill yet powerful side,” he shares.’
Darren’s Be With Me Deluxe Edition featuring his collab with Nik is now available at all leading record stores and on digital platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes, and Spinnr.
