Filipino boy bands The Juans and SB19, known together as SBJuan9, last Monday announced that they are collaborating on a new song.
The P-pop groups made the announcement on The Juans’ TikTok live where they also showed a glimpse of how they are writing the song.
The Juans vocalist Carl Guevarra said that the song will be inspired by real-life, everyday stories of Filipinos, amid the challenging times.
“We want to write a song that will speak about the stories of an ordinary ‘Juan’ like us, not only to tell them that we understand them, but also to let them know that we want to be their teammates,” Guevarra said.
As part of the writing process, three guests were invited to tell bits of their life stories as song inspirations during the live stream.
Guest Khely Arroyo highlighted the importance of having friends around as his teammates to help him get through his worries.
“They are the constant reminder that my worries are only a small part of the fraction, and the bigger part of the fraction are the good things in my life,” Arroyo said.
Guevarra said that the length of their songwriting process varies, ranging from weeks to even years. However, for the current song they are working on, he said that they are accelerating the process.
“Our adrenaline is on a whole new level because you are witnessing how we’re writing a song in the middle of it… We’re actually literally writing a song and producing it already while we’re here [in] the studio,” he said.
SBJuan9 also shared that although they encounter difficulties when working in a group, they find ways to make these challenges work for them instead of against them.
“Being in a group can be hard because we have different creative thoughts… but this is how we know that we will be doing something good because it challenges our thoughts,” SB19 vocalist Pablo said.
“Whatever each of us think will work for the group, we combine them to create a better craft,” he added.
For Guevarra, their process is guided not only by creativity but also maturity and their writing intentions for their listeners.
The Juans’ RJ Cruz said that they “treat it (songwriting) as a good problem” because they have more creative thoughts.
“It’s more difficult if we can’t think of anything, so it’s a good problem. And this is what we have learned over the years, to manage the creative differences and how we will gel it together.” Cruz said.
SBJuan9 last collaborated in 2021 to produce the song titled “Push Ang Pusuan” along with “Catriona” hitmaker Matthaios. The collaboration was for cellular service brand TM.
