This past year demanded that I be comfortable with silence, ambiguity, and uncertainty.

One of the things that I have done to make myself comfortable sitting in this space is through music. Music feels like a second skin to me. I spent a great deal of my childhood and teenage years learning how to play instruments and writing song lyrics. (I ended up writing the lyrics to one of my high school batch’s graduation songs.)

Music pierces my heart deeply, and sometimes it brings me to tears.

I believe in music’s power to create community, to build bridges where there were none, and to touch people’s hearts and lives.

My country is home to many talented musicians, and for this weekend, I wanted to write a recs list to share a few tracks that I’ve fallen in love with over the past year.

Something sweet and chill. My first recommendation is from one of my favorite groups, BINI. They released FLAMES (named after a popular fortune-telling game in the Philippines where each letter stood for Friendship, Love, Affection or Anger [depending on who taught you the game], Marriage, Engagement, and Soulmates) late last year, and I enjoyed how it showcases BINI’s love for R&B and pop. It feels like their vocals are just getting better, and their willingness to step out of the cutesy pop brand they’ve been associated with so far makes me look forward to what else they can do.

One of my favorites from this album is Katabi, a more R&B-inspired track that would feel at home in late 90s to early 2000s R&B. Katabi focuses on wanting to spend time with the one you love as much as possible. I love that it paints a picture of quiet domesticity—there’s nothing else to want, just having someone you love next to you is enough.

A myth, from a legend. I discovered Ruby Ibarra when I learned that she won the NPR Tiny Desk contest, specifically with this entry. Someone on Twitter recommended Bakunawa to me when I mentioned how cool it would be for a female artist to have a song named after this mythological figure, essentially a sea serpent that looks like a dragon, known for causing earthquakes, rain, and other phenomena.

I ended up in a bit of a Ruby Ibarra rabbit hole after, which is great, because she raps with the fury of someone who knows how to transmute their anger into messages so sharp and clear that you can’t look away from what she wants you to open your eyes to. Listening to Ruby Ibarra’s music is like watching a master forge a blade and make their first cut. Her passion is untethered, her verses are surgical in their precision.

A kind of quiet heartbreak. I discovered Chezka’s music because an artist I was following recommended her track What Could’ve Been. I was drawn to this particular track because it talks about something that’s still considered taboo in Filipino culture—seeing and acknowledging our parents’ faults or shortcomings. Connecting these shortcomings with one’s own choices in their romantic life makes it a little more heartbreaking, and Chezka’s writing shows how pain left unattended leads to heartbreak down the line. It handles that unwanted inheritance deftly and in doing so, makes the sting linger just a little bit more.

A melancholic ode to the capital and to the dreamers. If there’s one thing the growing Philippine pop community agrees on, it’s that Alamat (a six-member boy group from the Philippines) makes fantastic songs. The words ‘no skip discography’ are often thrown around. It’s hard to argue with that assertion because they make damn good music. Their latest album, Destino, has a number of tracks I could easily add to this list, but I wanted to celebrate one of their older releases first.

Nearly three years after its release, IsaPuso still has a hold on me. It’s an album I keep on revisiting, and last year I discovered Manila Dreams and promptly fell in love with it. There’s a quiet melancholy to this track that reminds me of the sunset. It captures the pain that comes with having to leave one’s hometown for Manila and paints a picture of how Manila is hell and heaven in equal measure, especially for those who dare to dream. There’s steel in this track too, because as much as Manila makes people want to give up, there’s also pockets of joy and hope in it that keep us dreamers going.

Pain that cuts like a knife. As someone who became a PPop fan nearly two years ago, one of my favorite moments so far is the three-day back to back to back releases of BINI’s FLAMES, Alamat’s Destino, and G22’s first album, The Dissection of Eve. It was an avalanche of fantastic music from three different groups.

One of my favorites from those releases is a track from the back half of G22’s The Dissection of Eve, Until When? (Kinakaya Ko Pa). G22’s AJ (who co-wrote the song with fellow member Jaz) describes the song as inspired by a falling out with a friend.

The pain that only comes with a friendship breakup is portrayed so well here. During your first listen, you can easily interpret this as a breakup track, but seeing it from a friendship breakup lens makes it even more painful, because friendship breakups sometimes feel more final than romantic breakups. You walk away from this track feeling like a piece of your heart and soul has lost forever, because that is the kind of wreckage that you face when you end a friendship—years of memories turn into nothing but ashes in one’s mouth, and the wound is reopened when you think of something you once would have enthusiastically shared with them.

The last midnight…? Alas Dose (which literally translates to twelve o’clock in Tagalog) from PPop girl group Calista, about a love that comes with an expiration date, is a catchy tune that’s a bit of a Cinderella retelling.

This song never fails to make me smile, and I think it’s because of the presence of the flute in the track, which does add enough whimsy to make it catchy as hell. I am also tickled by the fact that the flute parts do pair well with the girls’ higher notes; to me, it helps hammer the vibe of the song home.

I also love the contrast between this danceable tune and the yearning in the lyrics, it gives you that little bit of “Oh shit!” moment when you realize they’re listening about essentially a doomed romance.

It’s a wonderful song, easily one of PPop’s most underrated releases from the past year.

PPop has a deep bench of fantastic artists and performers, and frankly, I hope 2026 is the year that the rest of the world recognizes that.

If you’ve listened to these tracks or other tracks made by Filipino musicians, feel free to let me know.

As always, if you liked this newsletter, feel free to share it. 😁

See you folks next week!