It’s a commonly held belief that the dating pool is infested with hungry sharks looking for easy prey. Put your trust in the wrong person and you could swipe right into a load of heartache. We’ve all been there, and so has award-winning Toronto singer-songwriter Henry Lees.
Lees knows the perils of romantic pursuit all too well and some of those experiences provided the kindling for his fired up, funky new single, “Smoke”, available everywhere November 14, 2025 and adding some spice to the start of another super sweet, Hallmark-drenched holiday season.
“I like to call ‘Smoke’ the bad dream date song,” offers Lees. “The reality is that it’s tough out there in the modern digital dating world, Connections are made so conveniently on a screen but, you can often discover how tenuous and superficial that connection is in real life.”
“It’s a good thing though that bitter disappointment can be great fuel for a song,”
You made promises you knew you’d never keep
You lit the fire then, left me smouldering in the street
Now, I want all the charming words you spoke to disappear like smoke
Co-written with and produced by Vancouver-based singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer-on-the-rise Sean Thomas (Debbie Gibson, Joey McIntyre, NKOTB, New Edition), “Smoke” was ignited and almost completely finished during a single, laugh out loud cross-country writing session between Lees and Thomas.
Listen on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/track/1a5T3reCByrrdwkNdW1Rjq?si=41316143995f485e&nd=1&dlsi=c0fa412aeb014458
“There’s always an incredible energy co-writing with Henry,” notes Thomas. “He has such a natural talent for translating his passions into powerful, heartfelt songwriting. It was an honour to produce this track and bring it to life!”
This new collaboration already garnered pre-release industry honours when Lees was chosen as a Semi-Finalist in the Best AC Artist category for the 2025 Unsigned Only Music Awards based on the strength of “Smoke” as a submission to the annual, international contest.
“It was a real gift to have “Smoke” rise up and almost magically appear for Sean and me,” notes Lees. “Then, recognition by a major international music competition confirmed our feeling that we created something very special with this song.”
This is not the first time Lees and Thomas have won accolades for their collaborations. “Free This Love”, a 2023 single by Lees, co-written with Heather Pirie and Matt Gerber and produced by Thomas, became a Top 10 Finalist in the Pop category for the 27th USA Songwriting Awards and a Semi-Finalist for both the 2023 International Songwriting Competition and Unsigned Only. An earlier Lees/Thomas song, “Nothing Left to Lose” won second place honours in the 2021 Indie International Song Contest and was named a Top 10 Finalist for the 17th annual International Acoustic Music Awards. Since 2021, Lees’ songs have been honoured 10 times by major music competitions.
“Sean and I met and started writing together during the annual SongStudio Workshop in Toronto in 2018,” notes Lees. “I’m thrilled to see his career bloom as a sought after writer, musician and producer doing amazing work with legendary pop icons like Debbie Gibson and Joey McIntyre and still finding time to produce and release his own brilliant music. I’m grateful for what we get to create together.”
Prior to this, Lees’ varied musical life included writing, recording and performing everything from radio jingles to musical theatre and has taken him from the national airwaves to stages across Canada, including singing on two cross-Canada Huron Carole benefit tours with singer-songwriter, actor, philanthropist and Officer of the Order of Canada Tom Jackson. Shannon Gaye, a dear friend Lees’ sang with on those Huron Carole tours and an accomplished Canadian singer-songwriter with a number of releases to her credit, provides the soulful harmony vocals on “Smoke”.
In 2022, Lees celebrated his first number ones as a songwriter when triple Maple Blues Award nominee Chris Antonik and his album “Morningstar” hit #1 for 2 weeks on Roots Music Report’s all-genre, Top 50 Canada Albums Chart and “Back to the Good”, one of six songs Lees’ co-wrote with Antonik for the album, also hit #1 on the RMR.
Also in 2022, Lees released the single “Walking With Fear”, a very personal song of support for those dealing with anxiety disorders co-written with multi-award winning singer-songwriter David Leask and produced by Leask with JUNO winner Steve Dawson and The Henhouse Express. “Walking With Fear” was released in partnership with Anxiety Canada in support of Action Anxiety Day.
And more music is on the way from Lees, with three more singles and a full EP in the works for 2026.
So, has creating “Smoke” cleared away at least some of Henry Lees’ own bad-dream-date memories?
“I’m very happily past those dangerous dating pool days,” he says, “but long may those life experiences keep the songwriting fires burning.”
https://henrylees.bandcamp.com