LA-based Pinay artist debuts with CLOY- inspired song

MANILA, Philippines — Los Angeles-based Pinay singer Bey is one of the artists to watch this year. Signed up by Soupstar (the management team behind 6cyclemind, Sandwich, Banda ni Kleggy, Gracenote, Imago, among others), the newcomer has just made her music debut with the song Crash Landing, released under Universal Records.

Bey got the inspiration for the song after Eunice Jorge, the vocalist of Gracenote, introduced her to one of the biggest K-dramas of 2020, Crash Landing On You (CLOY). Both loved the series and especially its soundtrack. Bey thought if she were to create music in the future, she’d love to do something similar to the genres featured in CLOY.

“A couple of days later, (Eunice) came back to me with a demo for Crash Landing, and she said, let me know if you’d like it, we can start recording it as soon as possible,” Bey recalled.

They then began working on Crash Landing in August of last year. The lyrics are about someone hoping for her own “Captain Ri”, or someone who’s willing to cross borders or break barriers for you. The melody has a soaring kind of feel to match Bey’s lilting vocals. Interestingly, it features English and Korean lyrics. Bey said, “I was coincidentally learning how to write and read Hangul. I was already learning to speak it because of my past (work) position as a Korean liaison.”

She added, “I definitely think that it’s inspired by Crash Landing just because you feel that sense of love between the characters and the images that you see from the visuals. But, I definitely don’t think you have to watch the K-drama in order to understand what the song means.”

Bey is not a stranger to the local music industry. While raised in the States, she had the opportunity to live in the Philippines pre-pandemic. To become a music artist herself, however, was never in her plans.

It all started with an online video of her singing a Moira dela Torre song that Darwin Hernandez of Soupstar discovered. He reached out to her, opening this whole idea of her bringing out the musical side of her.

Bey said, “It was really just like innocent experimentation. I really wanted to just try it out. I didn’t think anything big was going to come out of it. And now here we are with the song.”

She also shared how she got to have her music released under Universal Records. “It was actually basically like a blind audition. When the song was already rendered, they listened to it, not knowing who I was, and they gave it a shot. They were like, okay, we are interested in the song, and then it came into fruition, it became a career and it was a surprise.”

While her foray into performing and recording wasn’t planned, she wouldn’t consider it an accident either. “Definitely, not an accident but an opportunity and blessing all at once just because it’s something that I love to do. It’s a passion of mine. So, to be able to manifest that into something, is really cool.”

She continued, “I just decided that it was a good opportunity just because of what’s happening right now. I think, everybody could use a lot more uplifting and since there’s not a lot of work that could be done, it was just a nice step and refreshing breath of air, I guess, for me to be doing something else, to be stepping out of my comfort zone, because I’ve been shy to sing in front of a lot of people.”

As she decided to pursue music amid a pandemic that has practically shut down the live music scene, she said, “It’s definitely been a lot of being nervous but also being really excited to do this, especially at a time like this because things aren’t going to be normal, the recording process definitely wasn’t normal, I had a makeshift studio in my garage. I had to be in Zoom calls with Ate Eunice and Kuya Darwin to have the songs made. It’s definitely very different.”

Bey is not formally trained in music — she did some voice and guitar lessons in the past — but she had early exposure thanks to a musically-inclined Pinoy family in the States. In terms of favorites, she cannot narrow down to a few artists, saying she enjoys diverse sounds. She acknowledged the influences of Eunice of Gracenote and Moira dela Torre, as well as Jay R whose R&B music introduced her to OPM. Her playlist at the moment includes a lot of BTS “because they also are pretty broad in their genres. So, I may be open minded to music, but they’re definitely one of my inspirations because they show like, you can do so many things, you don’t need to be boxed in into a specific genre or be seen as a specific image only.”

This is why after Crash Landing, expect different sounds and more songwriting from her in succeeding releases.

“I wouldn’t really like to categorize myself or what genre I would be releasing music in… I would love to experiment, or, you know, broaden out the type of music that I do because I feel like music is always evolving. It really just depends on, you know, what I’m feeling, what I’m picking on the time, and as long as it’s something that I’m happy with, my team’s happy with, and, ultimately, my listeners are happy with, that something’s I would do.”

(Stream Crash Landing now on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer and all digital stores worldwide under Universal Records.)