Some songs are meant to be sung by the multitude over the years and even generations. Others are meant to be enjoyed mainly by listening to them and vicariously going through the sentiments of the composer-singers.
The songs of Trisha Denise seem to belong to the latter category. Most of them are love songs of betrayal, pain, sorrow and missing someone once loved and adored. Star Music of ABS -CBN has been making her record her compositions that are then patronized by netizens through the digital video-sharing platforms by the tens of thousands to millions. That’s despite the fact that Trisha’s songs are not as easy to sing as the songs of Rey Valera or Odette Quesada or those written by Cecile Azarcon, George Canseco and and Willy Cruz.
Trisha’s songs are hardly performed in sing-along bars and not usually sung in singing contests — “Sunshine,” “Pieces of the Puzzle,” “Totoo,” “Mas Mabuti Pa,” “Bakit Ba?” or “Simula ng Wakas,” the latest carrier song from her new EP album. The same may be said about the songs she wrote for Belle Mariano, Vivoree, Maymay Etrata, Regine Velasquez and Pops Fernandez.
Though Trisha’s songs have catchy prosaic lyrics that have neither rhyme nor rhythm, they seem to have improvisational melodies that are easy to the ears because of her sweet little-girl voice but hard to catch and recall, thus seemingly discouraging music lovers to belt them out in sing-along bars and TV singing contests. Again, make no mistake about it, her songs are well-patronized (viewed and listened to) in the digital outlets.
The singer-songwriter’s full name is Trisha Denise Campañer, 26 going on 27 in September, and it seems to be her own decision to use her two first-names as her career brand. She says that she comes from a musically-inclined family and her parents were once professional singers themselves.
Trisha loves to recall in interviews that she started making up words and melodies when she was just six years old. At 11, Trisha learned to play the guitar. Her guitar-playing skills seem to have prompted her to start joining songwriting competitions when she was just in junior high school. She never won and seems to have never even made it as a finalist.
In 2015, when she was just 17, a song she submitted to a contest was eventually picked up by Star Music and included in Janella Salvador’s debut album. Trisha’s song was titled “Teka Muna, Pag-ibig.” Salvador herself was only 17 at that time.
Patronage of “Teka Muna, Pag-ibig” was slow to build up, but that didn’t stop whetting Trisha’s appetite from writing songs, submitting them to competitions and putting them up on the video-sharing websites.
By the time she turned 20 in 2018 and was taking up a degree in Music Business at Mint College in Metro Manila, she and her parents decided to put out an album for four songs she has written. One of the musical yarns was “Sunshine.”
The album launch was held at D’ Cup Coffee Republic on Pioneer Street in Mandaluyong, with tickets reportedly sold out a few days prior. Among those who attended were ABS-CBN music executive Jonathan Manalo and the Star Music artists Sam Mangubat and Jason Dy, the champion in ABS-CBN’s The Voice.
A few days after the launch, Star Music of ABS-CBN signed her up. Aside from “Sunshine” her debut album had three other songs, including the bonus track “Both Sides,” a collaboration with Dy. She later performed another track, “Mahalaga,” on the Wish Bus of radio station 107.5FM. It garnered more than 87K views and 1,000 likes.
Other songs of Trisha’s became part of the OST (original sound track) of ABS-CBN shows, including those shown abroad only through iWantTFC. Some of her rare optimistic musical effusions even become “anthems” for some advocacies, including women empowerment. But none of her songs in the albums of well-established singers like Fernandez and Velasquez has been used as the title song or carrier single.
Now that she’s almost 27 years old, she keeps gleefully announcing that she has never had a boyfriend and has never had the personal experience of the joys of being loved, in love, and the sorrow and pain of being “ghosted.” It seems easy to believe she loses no time to being in love or recovering from its wreckage.
Trisha Denise is almost unarguably a songwriting machine, if not a song factory. If her songwriting and singing don’t ever change, would she reach the practically revered stature of Cecile Azarcon for whom a 45th anniversary tribute has been slated for 24 to 25 May at The Theater at Solaire? Would Trisha care to be more than a song factory?
‘Cecile Azarcon: A 45th Anniversary Concert’
There are actually very few female pop song composers. Among the seasoned and renowned ones are Marilyn Villapando, Charo Unite, Trina Belarmino and Odette Quesada, who also record some of her compositions herself and who was recently honored with a 40th year anniversary tribute.
We know that Bayang Barrios, Moira de la Torre, Armi Milare (former vocalist of Up Dharma Down), Rhodessa (of Viva Music), Meriel de Jesus (who goes by the mononym Mrld as a Viva Music recording artist) and Janine Berdin also write songs but mainly for themselves, and no one yet among them approximate the brilliance and sensibility of Azarcon who has been based in the US for decades now and who now creates mostly spiritual/religious anthems.
Azarcon had her hit breakthrough at 19 with the inspirational “Lift Up Your Hands,” which was originally recorded by Basil Valdez and which was later covered by Sharon Cuneta and Gary Valenciano.
Azarcon’s other big hits are “Reaching Out” by Gary Valenciano and “Special Memory” by Iwi Laurel from the soundtrack of the movie Hotshots; “So It’s You” by Raymond Lauchengco from the Bagets soundtrack; “I Think I’m in Love” and “One More Try” by Kuh Ledesma; “How Did You Know?” By Chiqui Pineda and Valenciano; “Even If” by Jam Morales, “Sana ay Ikaw Na Nga” also by Valdez; and “Ikaw ang Lahat sa Akin” by Martin Nievera.
Joining Azarcon to perform her works in Cecile Azarcon: A 45th Anniversary Concert are Kuh Ledesma, Janno Gibbs, Jam Morales, Fe de los Reyes, Jackielou Blanco, Mark Bautista, Timmy Pavino and Isabella Gonzales.
Also up to share in the celebration are Nievera, Laurel and Nicole Asensio on 24 May, and Ogie Alcasid, Zsa Zsa Padilla and Katrina Velarde on 25 May.
Tickets to Cecile Azarcon: A 45th Anniversary Concert are now available on Ticketworld.
