SINGAPORE — While netizens continue to speculate how 81 judges became 92 at the finals of Sing! China, Nathan Hartono said he does not think there was any conspiracy behind the event, adding that Chinese singer Jiang Dunhao deserved to win the competition.

The wildly popular Chinese reality singing competition ended in controversy last Friday, when the Singaporean singer was declared first runner-up behind fellow finalist Jiang, who is from Xinjiang. A panel of 81 music professionals were invited to vote on the winner in the final round, but Hartono received 45 votes and Jiang got 47, bringing the total to 92. Sing! China has not officially explained the discrepancy.

“I don’t quite know what was going on. I was doing the math on stage as well. That is why I was having a bit of a laugh on stage,” said Hartono, who arrived back in Singapore on Sunday night, during an interview over breakfast with TODAY. “People suspect it was some kind of weird trickery ... I don’t think so. I think someone just messed up on the computers.”

“I think what (Jiang) has over me in spades is his ability to communicate well in music and in Chinese especially,” he continued. “In terms of the voting, I don’t know what happened. I think someone screwed up and probably someone got fired. But at the end of the day, whoever wins the show is the person that the Chinese audience wants to see and I am completely okay with that. I was just happy to be there that night.”

Nevertheless, Hartono is thankful to the judges who had voted for him, as their support represents the Chinese music industry’s willingness to accept his brand of music.

“It was very affirming to me as a musician, as a performer, to get that respect,” he said. “If anything, it encourages me to keep on the path and do more and do better. Now, I am just ready to go back to work, do more and hopefully go on to greater things. I don’t want this competition to define me for the rest of my career.”

As for what’s next, the 25-year-old will spend the coming months making more music, and will hold a concert “sooner than later”. In addition to the songs he recorded earlier this year, Hartono also plans to begin working on Chinese music.

“I am incapable of writing Chinese lyrics at the moment, because speaking is one thing, but being poetic and beautiful is another thing. I’ll probably be collaborating with lyricists, and I will probably take on the composer-arranger helmet, and we will try to figure something out,” he said. “It’s an interesting feeling being in a position where people actually now care about the stuff you do.”

As he continues to field the offers he has received for collaboration, Hartono said his guiding principle will always be “the music”.

“It’s always going to come down to, can it make me happy, or can it be an honest expression of what I want to do. I have been in this situation before where I have made music that I was not comfortable with or I felt was not an honest expression of myself. Sometimes those decisions are more business-oriented as opposed to artistically-oriented, and I feel now I have that luxury of making them art-oriented. Where before I was kind of like clawing away, figuring out what I need to be doing. Which is never the right way to approach art of any kind,” he mused.

“Right now it’s just about making the music that I want to make, or making the music I feel should be made.”