Sweet: the "monumental" band of Indie music, disbanded with incomprehensible regret

In early 2024, Vietnam's leading Indie band - Sweet officially said goodbye to the audience when announcing their suspension of activities. This caused many people great shock and regret.

Sweet was founded in 2013 by three members Vu Dinh Trong Thang, Nguyen Hung Nam Anh and Tran Binh Tuan. In addition to Thang who comes from an artistic family and often participates in performances, the other two members tinker with musical instruments on their own. The 3 boys participated in many activities of the underground music community (underground music) in Hanoi.

Talking about the group's name, Vu Dinh Trong Thang said: "When forming a band, you have to choose a certain name. At first, the members didn't know what to name, then I set the criterion that the band name must be a word, the word must be Vietnamese and an adjective. Sweet was born in such a random way."

Before the release of his debut album with the band, Sweet was loved by the audience through a few compositions uploaded to YouTube such as Views, Green, Let Me Follow, Em Lately, Salmon ...

From the early days of recording with iPhone speakers, in 2014, Sweet released the song Salmon - the first product recorded by the group in a professional studio. Thanks to the positive feedback of listeners, Sweet continued to record Everywhere, which was also the group's first song aired on radio stations in Vietnam.

In 2015, the group released their debut album titled Sweet. This is also the time when bassist Phan Viet Hoang officially joined the group after returning from studying abroad.

From here, the band Sweet began to "sprout" among young people through a series of songs Views, You Walk, Let Me Follow, Do Nothing...

In 2016, Binh Tuan left the band to study abroad, Nguyen Chi Hung joined. By the end of 2021, Chi Hung also left the group to focus on his own projects. After that, the band welcomed a new member, Hoang Chi Trung to play keyboards.

Although luckier than many independent groups and artists, Sweet still faces many difficulties and pressure to earn a living in her artistic journey.

The members once admitted that performing income was just like ordinary wage earners. The team must take into account the problem of investing, profiting and then using the proceeds to reinvest and survive.

However, Sweet is always consistent with the spirit of "if you play, you must play kindly". " A stage with an audience watching me is fun. It doesn't matter that there must be crowds, there must be spectacular sound and light to flourish, we always believe that we only need to make quality music, everything else does not need to worry", the group once shared.

Thanks to that spirit, Sweet's later albums such as Ng bthg (2017) and 3 (2019) and Sow (2022) all received enthusiastic attention and support from the audience.

In the albums, Ng bthg is a special product of the group with many hits such as Wild Cat, Em Recently... The song "Em" helped the band win "Song of the Year" and "New Artist of the Year" awards at the Dedication Awards in early 2018. This is also the first time an indie artist has been honored with important categories.

From the student group, the 9X boys have become one of the top indie artists of Vietnamese music. They were critically acclaimed, loved by the public, received many music awards, had "sold out" live shows with thousands of audiences.

The group has contributed to helping the indie music genre - which has a humble status - have impressive breakthroughs, holding its own position in the hearts of fans, creating a different picture compared to popular pop music.

In the afternoon of March 19, the band Sweet suddenly confused people by posting a status announcing that they would stop performing from today. Specifically, the group shared: "Sweet officially stopped performing from today. Thank you so much! A very meaningful journey. We will continue to produce Sweet's last album." As such, the 4-member band will not participate in stage performances from today and will only work on their final album together. This announcement is like 1 farewell of Sweet to the audience who have love for the group.

The brief fan apology was only written under the comment section of the post. There was no satisfactory explanation, all the fans got back was a loudspeaker apology, it was not easy to appease the audience who paid for tickets and fell in love with Sweet all the way.

"Irresponsible", "Disrespectful to fans", "Straight slap on Sweet lovers", "Sad and turned exasperated. Sweet is not childish, why act like that"... It was one of many comments the audience directed towards Sweet. Many people don't understand why there was such a painful punchline breakup.

Within a week, the group announced their disbandment and cancellation of the show without giving a clear reason. On March 28, team leader Vu Dinh Trong Thang spoke out about the incident.

The singer said that his mental health was not good, he agreed to let people perform his songs including commercial purposes.

He insisted that he would act for fans, but not as Sweet. Under the comment section, many fans sympathized and left comforting messages, wishing the singer well on his new journey. On the contrary, on community pages, the audience still found it difficult to accept Thang's explanation because Sweet chose to disband in the anger of fans, despite his 10-year journey.