Kinga

Kinga, born Tomas C. Fussey, is originally from Nelson, British Columbia, and spent part of his youth in Calgary, where the city's nightlife gave him his first taste of the club world. He began wearing makeup at sixteen. At seventeen he hitchhiked east from Calgary to Toronto and took the name Kinga soon after he arrived. By his early twenties he had become one of the more recognizable figures in the city's downtown club scene. Long hair, makeup and heels were part of his image years before he had a record to promote.

He worked at the Diamond Club, one of Toronto's best-known alternative venues, from the day it opened in 1984 until the day the doors were locked around 1993, first in coat check and later around the box office, taking in the music and personalities that passed through. Newspaper profiles at the time treated his appearance almost as much as his music, but Kinga was already working seriously toward a recording career. He spent two years at the Toronto Conservatory of Music, made demos, worked in studios and rehearsed with professional musicians and producers. He was also writing steadily.

In 1988 he released his first record on his own King Rhythm label (RRT-001): 'Elevator Operator' backed with 'Sexy Boy'. Kinga wrote the lyrics and shared the writing credit with keyboardist Dan Madison, and veteran producer Bob Gallo produced the session at Phase One Studios in Toronto. 'Elevator Operator' was the A-side, but 'Sexy Boy' quickly became the song that defined the record. CFNY, Toronto's influential alternative station, put it on the air, and Kinga was surprised that radio went for the B-side. The song's flirtatious lyric and synth-driven arrangement fit the image audiences already associated with him.

The record moved him from the Diamond's coat check to its stage. CBC television filmed his first live performance there and profiled him for After Hours. When the Toronto Sun caught up with him in December 1988, he was preparing for a Diamond show and CFNY was already playing 'Sexy Boy'. He also played Boots and Buds during Midsummer's Madness IV, a benefit for Casey House and the PWA Foundation. By the end of the year the single had earned him a CFNY CASBY nomination for Best Independent Artist of 1989.

By April 1989 Toronto newspapers were reporting that Kinga had signed with Amok Records and that 'Sexy Boy' was being rebuilt as a 12-inch dance release. On the resulting Amok EP530, almost every part was re-recorded or remade, Kinga's vocal included, and the new production pushed the song toward a darker, slicker club sound. The record carried the 6:35 'Late Night Dance Mix', a dub and a 7-inch remix/edit. The remix production is credited to "K. Bros", Marco Luciani programmed the track and Hugh Cooper engineered at Metalworks Studios. The Record reviewed the 12-inch on July 17, 1989, calling the K. Bros Late Night Dance Mix "Nervy, NRGetic, Euro-slanted sass," and noted that the song had first appeared in seven-inch form the previous year. Kinga himself was taken aback by the moody, polished result, and sales were disappointing. As he later put it, "It was not the sound of the moment."

Street Sound's 1989 year-end issue named 'Sexy Boy' Best Late Night Sleaze and listed Kinga among its Most Promising New Artists. The 1990 Toronto Music Awards nominated him for Best Toronto Pop/Dance Group or Artist, in a field with Sheree, John James, Candi, Karen Silver, Kon Kan and Donna Robbins. He kept playing the Copa and the Diamond, where CFNY presented him as the Saturday headliner on July 28, 1990, and he opened for Deee-Lite.

By then Kinga was doing far more than singing. Of the first single he told the Toronto Sun, "I just wrote the lyrics." By the next sessions he was engineering demos, co-writing and co-producing, the start of a large body of music that never received a period release. He moved to New York City in 1993 and recorded more than forty tracks there.

In New York his sideline in makeup became a profession, and he travelled internationally as a makeup artist with Roberta Flack and Neil Sedaka. Music remained part of his life, but public recording fell away. He spent about twenty-five years in New York before returning to Toronto, three decades on from his first recording period.

Back home, he found that a DJ had posted 'Sexy Boy' on YouTube and that listeners around the world were asking where to hear it. The record was hard to find on vinyl and unavailable digitally, so Kinga began planning a reissue. The work slowed during the pandemic, and in the meantime he started writing again, reworked the song and got his voice back to where it had been in 1988. On October 28, 2022, King Rhythm issued 'Sexy Boy (Champain Mix)', his first appearance on streaming platforms. 'Something's Gotta Give', written with two long-time writing partners, followed on March 10, 2023, his first new song in three decades. He names George Michael and Prince as the artists who shaped his sense of rhythm and the way he phrases a lyric, and his aim is still straightforward pop: memorable songs made to entertain.

On June 20, 2025, San Francisco archival label Dark Entries reissued 'Sexy Boy' (DE-316) for Pride Month. The 12-inch collects the original 7-inch mix, three versions from the Amok record and a previously unreleased 'TV Mix', newly remastered and packaged in a reproduction of the original sleeve with liner notes, lyrics and an 8x10 press photo. Its credits add Tobi Lark on backing vocals and Louis Socci on guitar, and its notes place Calgary's nightlife at the start of Kinga's story.

By then Kinga was well into a second creative period, with King Rhythm still his label. 'Cash Only', a tongue-in-cheek darkwave track with Toronto industrial artist Symptom-9, came out in October 2025. In 2026 he began working with Swedish producer StoneBridge: the Just Play the Music EP (April 10) was their first co-write, Giorgio followed on June 5, and StoneBridge's extended mix of 'Pump' arrived in August. By September 'Just Play the Music' had climbed into the top ten of the BILLCS Top 30.

Alongside the solo work, Kinga formed HarlowBardot with Marc Wonnacott, a founding member of The Biffs and Land of Giants. The name joins the surnames of Jean Harlow and Brigitte Bardot. The two had moved through overlapping Toronto scenes for decades without properly meeting until social media brought them together. Wonnacott sent Kinga an instrumental, Kinga added lyrics and melody at home, and with Rob Stuart as co-writer it became 'Nothing (Stays The Same)', the duo's first single in early 2025. 'You Sleep', 'Static In My Head' (remixed by StoneBridge) and 'Wednesday Night' followed that year. In 2026 came 'Midnight In Japan', with Kinga on vocals, Wonnacott and Stuart on keyboards and programming, and Stuart co-producing with the duo, and then 'Apologies (Fashionably Late)'. The duo's roots are in the synth-pop and electronic music both men absorbed in the 1980s, and the project keeps producing new songs.

-Robert Williston