Lola Amour’s turn to shine

I was checking out Lola Amour online when this piece I wrote more than two years ago popped up. So, let us see what has happened to this band since.

First off, Lola Amour is back and I must say on top nowadays with It’s Raining in Manila.  Back then I wrote, “Well I do not think this band was ever really away or off the radar. These boys have been there all along starting when they were high school kids from De La Salle with a name that never failed to draw attention. Would you believe Sinigang na Baboy?

On the other hand, though, this is one of those groups who made a big dent and seemed so promising on their first time out only to disappear and be unheard of for a while. Many remember them as the sensation from one of those Wanderland Music and Arts Festival a few years back.” I wonder, too, whatever happened to the Wanderland?

So, from Sinigang Na Baboy, they went to another interesting name, Lola Amour, after the grandmother of lead singer Pio Dumayas who is now 92 years old. With this, they released an album of originals, Don’t Look Back, Fools, Maybe Maybe, No Tomorrow, Piece of Mind. The most commercial of the lot was the only Tagalog track, Pwede Ba.

I thought then that “the songs could have stood more polishing but the band had a well-defined, jazzy, alt pop sound that showed excellent potential.” And then, they disappeared again and came back three years later. That meant November 2020.

I believed I liked Lola Amour’s splashy return with a new version of the Don’t Look Back EP. “Dubbed as Revisited, it has the group taking liberties with their old songs with new, certainly better, matured arrangements. There is also one new cut, the poppy Please Don’t Leave. It is just too bad, they decided not to include Pwede Ba.  Incidentally, the song has a nice Korean version.

“Why, the Revisited? Maybe, these boys feel that now is the time for them to make a serious play for the hit charts. Let us wish them well. Again, I wonder. Why did they not include their song Sanity in the new release. That one has the makings of a big seller.”

And after another “disappearance” albeit a short one, they did make a serious play for the charts. Not with Pwede Ba? or Please Don’t Leave or Sanity, but with the funky Fallen with its cute falling monkey video.

This was a long, slow climb but Fallen was surefooted about everything and late last year, Lola Amour became a very hot, although already12-year-old band.

No wonder, it was a breeze getting their latest Raining in Manila up the hit charts. Would you believe a mind-blowing five million streams a week for this song? The biggest weekly streams for a Filipino song in the history of Spotify PH.

Lola Amour is made up of Pio Dumayas on guitar and lead vocals; Martin Kim on keyboards and background vocals; Raymond King on bass and background vocals; Zoe Gonzales on lead guitar; and Angelo Mesina on the trumpet.

Joxx Perez on sax and Renzo Santos on drums left the band a year ago to live abroad. Sad. But also glad that Lola Amour seems to have found very able replacements to keep their unique jazzy, funky kind of sound going.

To close, here are today’s hits as per the Billboard Global Philippines chart.

Seven by Jung Kook ft. Latto; Raining in Manila by Lola Amour; Gusto by Zack Tabudlo ft. Al James; Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift; Super Shy by New Jeans; Uhaw by Dilaw; Angels Like You by Miley Cyrus; Cupid by Fifty Fifty; Pasilyo by Sunkissed Lola; Die for You by The Weeknd and Ariana Grande; What Was I Made For by Billie Eilish; LDR by Shoti; Back To December (Taylor Version) by Taylor Swift.

Vampire by Olivia Rodrigo; Mine (Taylor Version) by Taylor Swift; YK by Cean Jr.; Kill Bill by SZA; What It Is (Block Boy) by Doechii ft. Kodak Black; Nonsense by Sabrina Carpenter; Mahika by Adie and Janine Berdin; Snooze by SZA; Enchanted (Taylor Version) by Taylor Swift; Always by Daniel Caesar; ETA by New Jeans; and Style by Taylor Swift.