I wrote the song “Bye Bye Na” in the early 2000s and entered it into a songwriting contest in 2003. It was chosen as one of the finalists, which meant the song would be part of the compilation album that the media network that held the contest –ABS-CBN–would launch after the grand finals. The album would be called Himig Handog Love Songs.

I still have the original 4-track cassette demo for this song as well as the original version that I submitted to ABS-CBN for consideration. When the song was chosen as a finalist, I told the album producer that I wanted to produce the music for this version and have a guest artist sing it for me. Thankfully, they agreed to this arrangement, so I produced the “album version” in New Jersey sometime in 2002.

The following year, Rivermaya was on tour in New York, and I approached Rico Blanco and Lizza Nakpil if they were interested in collaborating on”Bye Bye Na,” which they agreed to. I’ve known Rico and the band from my BMG Records days with The Freesouls, so it was not difficult to approach them for this request.

So, I sent the backing track for “Bye Bye Na” to the record producer in Manila and they booked a session at Pink Noise Studios for Rico Blanco to record the vocals. Rico suggested that it would be good to have an acoustic guitar track, which I thought was an excellent idea. So, we booked the guitar god Noel Mendez –previously from the amazing HAYP Band–to record the acoustic track. The track elevated the song and gave it a mellower, organic feel since my backing track was more electronic, with the addition of a Hofner bass track, which I recorded. Rico also added the vocal harmonies and the vocal counterpoints in the outro, which were outstanding. The whole session was supervised by my former Freesouls bandmate, Jeff Antiporda. You see, it takes a village to produce a song.

“Bye Bye Na” did not bag the grand prize, but it became a hit song and was even used for a film soundtrack during that time. I’ve recorded my versions of this song throughout the years with the latest version –and acoustic only version–included in the limited vinyl album, Trip sa Field.

Now, decades later, I see that the Rico Blanco version of “Bye Bye Na” has gotten over 14 million streams. I still can’t believe this. I can’t wrap my head around it still. I am sure this song is just one of Rico’s multi-million streaming songs out there given his amazing career in Rivermaya and his solo work, but for me, who’s just a regular musician, seeing this amount of ears listening to a song I just wrote on my mom’s old piano one random evening is just mind-boggling.

Listen to the different versions of “Bye Bye Na.”