adobo magazine sat down with Nica early this year and managed to pick her brain about the song’s origins, the communities that contributed to the song’s success, and what it feels like to have your work turn viral and hit the Billboard charts.
MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Among those who had imagined a slow tempo love song inspired by the real-life heartstring tugs of a budding romance would turn out to be a record breaking dance-pop hit and aired in one of the largest Jollibee ad campaigns, the songwriter was perhaps the last. After closing 2019 with over 73 million viewers on YouTube and hitting Spotify Global’s Viral 50 for the song “Tala,” songwriter Nica del Rosario is still awestruck over the record breaking success of the song she wrote for Philippine pop star Sarah Geronimo together with her team, Flip Music Productions.
The story behind making “Tala”
Behind many commercial music celebrities is usually an entire village (under a record label) of composers, writers, sound engineers, and producers, whose combined creativity and hard work birth these masterpieces that hit the viral soundscape and make icons out of pop stars, brands, commercial ads, and cult films. This particular song, which earned 72 million listeners on Spotify by the end of 2019 and boosted the viral success of a Jollibee commercial ad, was conceived within the quiet confines of four walls one night in 2016, as Nica del Rosario of Flip Music Productions pulled on the creative threads of her brain to write a song under a tight deadline to pitch to Viva and Sarah Geronimo’s next album. Working with a beat that her colleague Alisson Shore created, Nica found herself running away with her thoughts and allowed the words to flow, culminating in lyrics inspired by her own personal experience at that time. Working quickly to meet their deadline, the team mixed and recorded the demo song within a couple of hours. They eventually had to adjust the beat to make it into an upbeat dance-friendly song.
On her reaction to her work in a large ad campaign
“I was just watching TV with my parents and [the Jollibee ad] came up and I thought, that sounds a lot like Tala,” shares Nica as she remembers the first time she heard the song she wrote aired in a TV commercial. “I was surprised but it was also really fun. I had heard that Jollibee was going to license the song and I figured they’d probably rearrange it and use it for a commercial with Sarah [Geronimo] since Sarah’s a Jollibee endorser and we’d get a check, but it was so fun to hear the song in the ad.”
On the song’s recordbreaking return
“I had never imagined this was going to happen,” admits the songwriter on Tala’s surprise smash return after four years since it first went mainstream. “But I think it was a big hit amongst the LGBTQ+ community in the first couple of years it came out; my DJ friends would spin it in concerts and gigs and parties in Nectar and O Bar, and I heard it was this big dance craze and I thought that was great.”
Today, the song has around 116 million views on YouTube and made it into Spotify Global’s Viral 50 list as well as the Billboard Charts.
“I couldn’t believe it, at first I thought it was fake,” says Nica upon learning of Tala hitting global charts. “It was a huge milestone for me, and also for the company. I know it’s not Sarah’s first billboard hit but she still texted me and said congrats on the song hitting the charts, and I was super happy about that.”
The original music video of Sarah Geronimo’s Tala, released in June 2016:
On her favorite part in the song
“I like writing in metaphors so the whole chorus [“Hanggang dito nalang ba tayo?”] means, if you’re feeling something real for another person and if it turns out they actually don’t feel the same way, you don’t need to regret what transpired, because it was still something real. And I guess if the person does feel the same way, the line “Aabutin natin ang mga tala” basically means, we can reach the stars, we can be something amazing, this can be something that can last.”
“I guess my favorite line is the bridge [“Hindi man ako nilagay sa mundong ito para sa’yo / Parang nakatingin ang buong daigdig kapag ako’y yakap-yakap mo”]: For me, I don’t know if soulmates are real and there’s always a lot of uncertainty, so all we really have is the present and if in this moment the connection feels real, that’s all that matters to me.”
On advice to aspiring songwriters
“It is kind of cliché, but really, don’t give up right away. I’ve written like more than a hundred songs, and most of those songs have only been heard by me. Also, don’t be scared to work with people; it’s always good to collaborate. For me, one of the nicest feelings in the world is to create something with other people you like working with. And never, ever stop learning because there’s no cap for the things you can learn and grow as an artist or whatever you choose to pursue.”
Listen to Nica del Rosario’s music on Spotify, YouTube, and Deezer.
More on FlipMusic Productions visit flipmusicph.com, or follow them on FB, IG, Twitter, and tune in on Spotify.
