Plaka Notes #3: Talaarawan by Bini

The latest release from the Philippines' own "nation's girl group" marks a rare moment of wide acceptance for mainstream Pinoy pop.

I think we as a country were collectively traumatized by “Otso Otso”.

Okay, rewind. In 2003, the Filipino comedian Bayani Agbayani released “Otso Otso”. You only really have to listen to it once to know it’s catchy, but also, quite annoying.

It was also everywhere. This was the time when the “novelty song” was popular. The melodies were simple and easy to remember; the accompanying dances were ubiquitous, aided by the noontime variety shows. In an interview I remember reading but can’t find online, Lito Camo—the man responsible for writing most of these songs—likened his compositions to nursery rhymes, something even kids can perform, in front of their parents, say, or their classmates.

Ironically, these songs almost always had an element of double entendre. “Otso Otso” utilizes word play (in Filipino) that heavily implies fellatio. The Viva Hot Babes’ “Bulaklak” toes the fine line between being about flowers and being about a woman’s privates. The Masculados’ “Jumbo Hotdog”, well… clearly we got a kick out of that, the Philippines being a nominally culturally conservative country with a pretty green mind when it gets into it.

This obviously isn’t all there is to Filipino pop. It comes in waves: one time middle-of-the-road balladry will be dominant, the next it will be bands the youth flock to. (And sometimes it’ll be a mix of both, like the Manila Sound period of the 1970s.) But the split between what the “masses” and more “sophisticated” listeners like—usually defined by whether they get played in radio stations that broadcast exclusively in English, or in Filipino—was always there. The era of the “novelty song” in the early noughties, however, meant that divide was really wide. It’s not that we’ve never had those before—in the 1970s, Yoyoy Villame established himself with his humorous and catchy songs, culminating with “Butse Kik” in 1980—but there was just so much of them at the turn of the millennium. It would take a few years—and the rise of alternative and “acoustic” acts in the mid-2000s—for both sides of the audience to come closer.

Fast forward to 2024, and the gap is shrinking again. What makes me excited about Filipino pop now is how styles co-exist equally. Office-friendly pop still has a presence. The rise of bands like Ben&Ben and Lola Amour gives hope to those with more discerning tastes. Finally, we have had success in copying the K-pop formula. We don’t have worldwide phenomena yet, but we at least have some interesting variety in our pop music. (That said, the divide in what radio plays remains, even if broadcast has been severely diminished in the last few years.)

We’ve been trying to launch some sort of “P-pop” for at least a decade. Thing is, K-pop still had limited appeal at the time—Psy’s “Gangnam Style” was dismissed as a “novelty song”!—and so efforts like Pop Girls and MNL48 failed to take the country by storm. Even the debut of SB19 in 2018 was initially dismissed by some as just K-pop rip-offs. It is credit to them that they have proven those naysayers wrong and have become the pioneers of the thriving P-pop scene—although the fact that people can now love K-pop openly certainly helped the cause.

Among female P-pop groups, that pioneer label belongs to Bini. Put together as part of entertainment giant ABS-CBN’s Star Hunt, the group debuted in 2021—that’s considering their cover of Smokey Mountain’s “Da Coconut Nut” the year before is a pre-debut single, because, you know, that’s how they do it in K-pop. In many ways, it’s always been harder to crack the nut (not apologizing for the pun) if you’re a female group, but between being name-checked outside the usual places and having Red Velvet’s Irene dance “Pantropiko” in an online fan call, they’re pretty much up there now.

Between two albums and several singles in between, Bini have firmly established their sound: agreeable pop that, despite the packaging, doesn’t quite cross the line towards bubblegum pop’s cloying tendencies. Their first EP Talaarawan, released earlier this month, seems to be a key save point in the group’s journey of figuring out their sound. (Side note: they say this is their “first” EP, but length-wise, their two previous albums—2021’s Born to Win and 2022’s Feel Good—have the same length, if you remove the alternate versions. It’s all labels at this point.) For one, the rap breaks across all six songs really hit the spot for me, although it’s probably also because I am taken by the musicality of the Filipino language applied to the P-pop template. The record is the sound of Bini finally knowing their strengths and not being afraid to deploy them when needed.

And yet that means Talaarawan can’t help but feel a little safer than expected. While descending into the rabbit hole I was very much enamored by “B HU U R”, their collaboration with rapper Kritiko that came with Born to Win. That song goes hard—and it never stops going hard. I feel they’ve tempered this energy down on the new EP. But it’s not for lack of strong moments. The first three songs—previously released singles “Karera” and “Pantropiko”, and lead track “Salamin, Salamin”—are the good kind of catchy; I found myself singing parts of their choruses while walking down Ortigas last week.

The themes also aren’t offensive: you’re likely to get a love song (as you’d expect from most Filipino music) or a motivational one, something our collective value system demands. An exception is “Ang Huling Cha-Cha”, which takes its time in revealing its true nature as a break-up song—and even then it does go hard and in-your-face about it, something I frankly find refreshing.

The six songs are catchy, light and easy to get to, although the tendency of K-pop to feel like the songs are randomly put together persists even here. (Imagine the aforementioned break-up song immediately followed by “Na Na Nandito Lang”, which pretty much says “I’m right here” in Bini’s now-typical alliteration.) Chuckle-worthy mini-quibble aside, I feel like everyone should, at the very least, be okay when any of the songs on Talaarawan come on shuffle. You don’t have to dive into the group’s specific dynamic, as idol groups of any country tends to demand from listeners. (Whether one chooses to go into the rabbit hole and, say, figure out why Maloi is called “the nation’s girlfriend”, is another matter entirely. But judging from the group’s growing Spotify numbers, there’s a lot of us out there.) The EP is welcoming in many ways, and you should expect nothing less from the Philippines’ take on “the nation’s girl group”.

But if you aren’t into that, again, Pinoy pop has never felt this varied and textured in a while. A few days back Ena Mori dropped a new single, “Heartache Generation”, which gives me the perfect excuse to finally talk about her. Critics have called her “genre-bending” but I wouldn’t, partly because I’m just playing to be a critic, but mostly because her music sounds very much like her own, like you know it’s her the moment you hear it. Her 2022 album Don’t Blame the Wild One is pop with its best foot forward: cool enough to make you feel like a part of the in crowd, but accessible enough to have everyone in the room nodding along. Her new single continues in that vein: a gentle start, a rollicking chorus, and on and on it goes, at least for the next two and three-quarter minutes.

Also in the last few weeks, Filipino-American singer Eliza Marie dropped her debut album, As Above So Below. This one’s further down the cool spectrum, and yes, I know you might be wondering why I am mentioning her alongside poppier stuff, but the intimate nature of her songwriting definitely has parallels with some corners of Western indie pop. Not to mention, “Ew” is giving me very strong Dizzy vibes, and if you know me and my love for that band, you’ll understand that it’s not a bad thing.

Of course the choice isn’t solely between what a lot of people like and what some gatekeepers insist be kept within their walls alone. But that, again, is what makes Filipino pop so fun these days. All the variety, all the texture—and all pretty much on the surface. But maybe let’s not attempt to bring another “Otso Otso” out.