Majarlica on “Romantiko,” Reclaiming Tagalog, and the Art of Laughing at Yourself
It started as a rant. Angelica Tagadtad was alone in her bedroom, laughing at herself, scribbling down every embarrassing thing she’d ever done in the name of love. You probably know her as Majarlica. But that night she was just a girl with a journal and zero intention of sharing any of it. “I was writing all these funny things that, deep down, I’m like, I’m never going to share this with the world,” she says. “So I’m just going to keep writing my rants.”
Then the rants started sounding like verses. Then the verses started sounding good. Then she finished the song and thought, you know what, even though it’s definitely different from my other pieces of work, I really, really want to share this with people.
That song is “Romantiko,” her latest single under Star Pop, and it might be the most honest thing she’s ever released — which is saying something from an artist whose entire philosophy is “confidently vulnerable.”
The Bedroom Where Everything Started
Majarlica has been writing songs since before most people figure out what they want for lunch. She grew up in church, parents and siblings who were songwriters and producers themselves, music baked into the household like rice in the cooker. But the moment it stopped being casual, the moment it became “the thing” was grade nine. Thousands of students. A song she wrote. Fright in her chest.
“It was scary, and it was something that really made me anxious as a ninth grader, but it was one of those moments that was kind of like a love at first sight,” she says. “I realized, oh, this is what I want to do in my life and with my life.”
She was thirteen. By sixteen, she’d already composed a song, “Papi Love,” written in her bedroom for Loisa Andalio’s album. A middle school love song pitched into an open call and accepted. Just like that, she was a professional songwriter before she could vote.
Amy, Em, and the Album That Made Her Cry
Ask Majarlica about influences and you get a trilogy that explains everything. First: Amy Winehouse. She found Back to Black the old-fashioned way, by flipping through CDs at HMV, magnetized by the cover without knowing a single song. She bought it blind. Listened to nothing else for an entire year. “Her songs have a very strong personality, but the lyricism is so vulnerable and so soft. And that really resonated with me and who I was as a girl.”
Second: Eminem. A ninth-grade English teacher dissected “Lose Yourself” for literary devices, and Majarlica went home and fell down the rabbit hole of albums, autobiographies, documentaries. “Being exposed to someone who’s just honest and unfiltered and very funny and also would say the things that people are too afraid to say and say it in such a masterful way. “that’s what really resonated with me.”
Third, and this is the one that changed everything for her, Gloc-9. She was losing her Tagalog. Living in the Greater Toronto Area, enrolled in Extended French, she realized she knew more French than her own mother tongue. Her brother handed her MKNM: Mga Kwento Ng Makata. She cried.
“It kind of unlocks a part of myself that I realized I almost forgot, which is the story of being a Filipino and the beauty of poetry in the Tagalog language,” she says. “There’s so much passion and heart and soul in his music and so much honesty about the Filipino experience.”
She made an oath: she would never forget Tagalog. She dove into FlipTop battles, Filipino hip-hop, Jose Rizal, Bob Ong, indie films and just about anything that pulled the language and the culture back into her bones. And she started writing Tagalog songs for the first time. The songwriter who’d only ever written in English was reclaiming something she almost let slip.
The Song That Played Across a Country
That reclamation gave us “Kalikasan” which is a track she recorded vocals for in her bedroom with zero marketing budget behind it. It became an organic hit across the Philippines. Years later, it still gets played annually in campaigns, in dances, in movements. She didn’t plan for cultural impact. It found her.
“I never expected the cultural impact that you can have as a songwriter,” she reflects. “To have something like your voice that you recorded in your bedroom be played across the Philippines and have it be a part of these movements that are meaningful. “It reminds me that music is such a powerful tool,” she reflects.
The New Chapter
Now she’s signed to Star Pop as a recording artist. Not just a songwriter behind the curtain, but the voice out front. Her debut single “Royalty” marked the pivot into R&B and soul, a deliberate artistic direction after years of genre-hopping across rock, hip-hop, dream pop, folk, and acoustic ballads. She calls it evolution. It sounds like someone who finally stopped asking permission.
“Romantiko” is the next step. Written entirely by Majarlica from music, lyrics and vocal production with arrangement, mixing, and mastering by Theo Martel Alpaz, a producer she admires from the Star Pop roster. She recorded her vocals in Canada. He built the arrangement in the Philippines. A long-distance collaboration that had her dancing the first time she heard it back.
The song is about being a relentlessly hopeful romantic who’s learned to be brutally honest about every dumb, beautiful, embarrassing thing she’s done in the name of love — and who’s finally learned to laugh at it. If that sounds like the journal entry it started as, that’s because it is. The difference is she’s not hiding it anymore.
Find Majarlica
“Romantiko” drops on all streaming platforms via ABS-CBN Music / Star Pop. September 11, 2026. Stream “Royalty” now. Follow Majarlica wherever you listen. Also featured on Spotify Playlists – All New OPM and New Music Friday Philippines
CREDITS:
- Photography Team Lead Photographer, Director, and Editor: Jayson Alcazar Assistant Director and Gaffer: Joaquin Puyat
- ABS-CBN Music Team Music Marketing Specialist (StarPop) and Overall Photoshoot Producer & Co-Director: Francene Panis AdProm Specialist (StarPop): Denice Rezari
- Marketing Team Interns and BTS Shooters: Carmella Jaleco, Aljed Gaffud, Pearl Penales, Ryann Chua
- Majarlica Team Angel Tagadtad (Majarlica) Hair and Make-Up: Perfect Glow by Tet Tolentino Make-Up Assistant: Shiela Marie Reyes Stylist: Tet Tolentino
- Special Thanks Patty’s Comfort Food · ABS-CBN DTC WPSS Unit · ABS-CBN Music Team · ABS-CBN StarPop Team
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