Words by Julienne Loreto • June 24, 2026

Non-fiction • Interviews/Features

BINI’s “Lagi” was released exactly four years ago today, on June 24, 2022. At the time, the girl group had recently celebrated their one-year anniversary together under ABS-CBN Star Music. On September 29 that year, it was re-released as a track on BINI’s sophomore album Feel Good. The general public often lumps “Lagi” with the likes of the album’s title track “I Feel Good” plus “Salamin, Salamin,” as these songs were vital in establishing BINI’s bubblegum aesthetic from 2022 to 2024.

However, the latter two’s instrumentation leans towards groovy funk textures and bright metallophone accents. “Lagi,” on the other hand, combines ’90s-throwback pop with rock and R&B influences and retro chiptunes. It’s my favorite BINI song ever. Feel Good dropped before BINI’s breakthrough success in 2024, so many casual fans have forgotten or never knew that era. Yet I’m hardly alone in choosing “Lagi” as a favorite. For instance, American journalists Lai Frances (Teen Vogue, GRAMMY.com, etc.) and Jeff Benjamin (Billboard, Forbes, etc.) have named it as a standout in BINI’s discography as well. The unique genre fusion in “Lagi” is catnip for music analysts.

The song’s musical arranger, Ramiru Mataro, tells me he used these stems in “Lagi”: drums, synth bass, his Yamaha MB40 bass guitar (though it’s very subtle, nigh-inaudible in Star Music’s final mix), electric piano with organ, muted electric guitar lead, synth lead, synth pad, and trance synth. The dense stack of instrumental layers is juxtaposed with a much simpler foundation: a two-chord guitar progression by Louie Canaria, the song’s lyricist and composer.

“I was very pleased with that progression because aside from the fact that it sounded nice, it also felt nostalgic,” Canaria says in Tagalog. According to him, the essence of “Lagi” is teenage love in the 1990s. At his apartment, he kept on strumming those notes on his acoustic guitar until the words and melody came to him. “The first line that came out of my mouth was ‘lagi nang umaawit’ along with the melody,” he says.

This was all the way back in 2017. Star Music hadn’t even recruited the BINI members as girl group trainees yet. Back then, Canaria worked as a dance coach and choreographer. Although he’d been writing songs as a hobby since high school, he admits he knew little about music theory. He simply loved listening to music. “That’s why when I discovered the chord progression for ‘Lagi,’ I became obsessed with its sound. I didn’t even know what those chords were called,” he says.

Later that year, he and the song’s musical arranger Ramiru Mataro crossed paths at their mutual friends’ wedding in Baguio. Half of the track had already been written at the time, but the event inspired him to pen new lyrics like the opening lines sung by BINI’s Aiah in the final product. At the bed-and-breakfast they stayed at, Canaria borrowed Mataro’s acoustic guitar and sang “Lagi” to him with the updated verses.

“Hearing him sing that verse, the pre-chorus, and the chorus immediately hooked me,” Mataro says. 

A year later, when the two were back in Manila, Canaria reached out to Mataro, asking if he could create a studio-quality demo for “Lagi.” Mataro readily said yes, but admits he was terrified he might “ruin” the excellent foundation laid out by Canaria.

“About 90% of ‘Lagi’ relies entirely on [Canaria’s] simple two-chord progression – excluding the bridge, which shifts into a completely different progression,” he explains. “The foundation was already so beautiful and perfect that I was terrified of ruining it by overcomplicating things with extra chords.”

Canaria originally envisioned “Lagi” in the new jack swing genre, a blend of R&B vocals and hip-hop production. (BINI would later explore this sound in songs like “Sugar Rush” from their 2026 mini-album Signals.) The final version of “Lagi” retains Canaria’s R&B-inspired melodies, namely in the bridge sung by BINI’s Jhoanna and Maloi, where they perform the melismatic vocal runs (or kulot, as Tagalog slang would call it) common to the genre. However, a birthday party steered Mataro towards a pop-rock and synth-pop musical arrangement for “Lagi.”

Namely, the cheap-sounding karaoke tracks he heard at the event told Mataro exactly what he didn’t want to do for the song. The party was fun, but he remembers thinking, “At the very least, they could use a decent drum plug-in on those tracks.” He made a promise to himself before the night ended: “I was going to produce a track that sounded similar to those karaoke drum sounds, so that when karaoke machines eventually replicated my arrangement, it would sound as close to the original as possible.”

Mataro, a bassist, admits he’s not much of a drummer. So the percussion in the song is “nothing fancy,” he says, “just basic, honest playing.” Although he used programmed, electronic MIDI drums for “Lagi,” he spent hours shopping through his library to find plug-ins that evoked a natural, organic drum kit, the kind that a traditional rock band would use.

It might be hard to believe, given that BINI’s visual presentation in “Lagi” — sunny-smiled girls in cutesy all-pink outfits, surrounded by donuts, marshmallows, and all things sweet — completely defies rock star stereotypes. But when I ask him if he considers “Lagi” a pop-rock song, Mataro says, “Absolutely yes.” As the arranger, he consciously paid homage to 1990s/2000s alternative rock and punk acts for “Lagi,” like Alanis Morissette, No Doubt, Michelle Branch, Maroon 5, and Avril Lavigne, especially in the song’s drum rudiments.

Canaria found a vocalist for the demo, Kris Berneta. For her sake, Mataro gave the track a karaoke-style melody guide inspired by the 8-bit and 16-bit video game chiptunes from his favorite retro games. “It takes me straight back to my childhood playing Famicom, Gameboy, [and] SNES games,” he says of the nostalgic synth lead. What started out as a guide for the demo singer was kept in the final version of “Lagi,” prominently heard in its iconic opening and coda.

The demo was completed in 2018. However, it didn’t reach BINI until the last quarter of 2021. BGYO’s Gelo, an acquaintance of Canaria’s, gave him an email address to which he sent the demo for “Lagi.” Several months passed and they found out that the song had been accepted by Star Music, with a stamp of approval from the BINI girls themselves.

I got to hear the 2018 demo for “Lagi” myself when Mataro graciously shared it with me during our interview. From what I can hear, it does sound almost exactly like the finished product, about 95% similar according to Mataro himself: a combination of danceable retro R&B-tinged pop, just like Canaria envisioned, plus Mataro’s pop-rock and synth-pop flavor. Even parts that you might assume were added by the BINI members, like Maloi’s “Ikaw pala ang araw sa likod ng ulap…” bridge, were already in the demo.

One thing surprised me, however: the demo was originally in a slightly higher key. Canaria and Mataro are men, so I’d previously assumed that the demo would’ve been in a lower key, not realizing that a woman recorded the vocals for them. The original vocal range for the song was F3 to F5; BINI’s version swapped the Fs out for Es, exactly two semitones/a full tone lower.

The transposition occurred just a little over a week before the song’s release, when producer Manalo reached out to Mataro on June 13, 2022. The reasoning was practical: “‘Lagi’ has an enormous amount of wordplay-heavy lyrics and vocal belting, so the lower key made it more physically comfortable for the performers,” he explains. Singing two whole octaves in a single song while dancing is challenging for anyone.

Although the key was lowered, the post-bridge section – where Colet takes the climactic third chorus higher in pitch and sustains a stunning B4 belt – was not in the demo. Rolling Stone Philippines’ Pie Gonzaga declared it “the greatest part” of the track. Jhoanna and Maloi’s final ad-libs were absent too, though the vocal run Colet did at the very end was in the draft version. 

He credits BINI’s vocal coach Anna Graham, a friend of his, alongside the BINI members themselves, for these melodic variations and ornaments. When Manalo sent the audio master to Mataro via Google Drive, he was surprised by how “international” the song sounded: “familiar, but completely new.”

So far, BINI’s top three most streamed songs on Spotify come from their breakthrough mini-album Talaarawan (2024): “Pantropiko,” “Salamin, Salamin,” and “Karera.” Quietly enduring, “Lagi” is a wildcard fourth-placer with 97.4 million streams (as of writing) on the app. In 2024, two years after its release, “Lagi” saw a fresh wave of commercial success, peaking at number five on Billboard Philippines’ Top Philippine Songs chart in the week of July 13. It also landed in the upper half of their year-end Hot 100 chart at 45.

Canaria is “really proud” of everything that “Lagi” has accomplished. “I was a frustrated songwriter for a very long time. There were so many times where I just wanted to quit, but I always come back,” he says. “All those years of frustration, all those times that I [doubted] myself, it was all worth it when the song was released and people still listen to it until now.” To him, the song is like his child. He admits that a part of him didn’t believe in its potential, but he’s never been happier to be proven wrong. Songwriting will always be a part of who he is; he embraces it now, thanks to “Lagi.”

That little song Canaria created in his apartment nine years ago bloomed into something quite special. Its simplicity is surrounded by chaos, where pop-rock, R&B, synth-pop, and bubblegum all collide. “That was the result of everything coming together,” Mataro says. Like something built with Legos, the song wouldn’t have worked without all of this, he says: “Louie’s lyrics and original musical idea, my arrangement, Coach Anna’s vocal coaching, Jonathan’s overall production vision, BINI’s talent, and the contributions of everyone involved.”

In most Philippine love songs, romance is presented as all-consuming. Despite its retro sound, “Lagi” takes a thoroughly modern approach to the topic. As Canaria explains, the lyrics of “Lagi” don’t paint love as a necessity. He points out that the narrator of the song is pretty much telling their love interest, “I was fine when you weren’t here. I wasn’t looking for romance. I was happy in life. I had friends and family. But when we met, I realized that life can get even brighter and more beautiful.”

For millions of BINI’s listeners worldwide, “Lagi” has a similar effect. It’s a piece of pop, not a necessity like food or shelter. But gosh, aren’t you glad you found this song? Isn’t it nice that being alive is more than just hustling and surviving, and sometimes you get to just stop and hear some wonderful music?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julienne Loreto (they/them) is a writer born and raised in Leyte, now living in the United Kingdom. They are the editor-in-chief of kasing2. You can also find their work in other magazines like The Line of Best Fit (UK).