Manila sound was popularized by the
pop rock band
Hotdog with their many hit singles, including "Ikaw ang Miss Universe ng Buhay Ko" (You Are the Miss Universe of My Life), "Panaginip" (Dream), "Langit Na Naman" (Heaven Once Again), "O, Lumapit Ka" (Oh, Come Closer), "Bitin sa Iyo" (Left Hanging Over You), and "Dying to Tell You", among others. The term "Manila sound" was used in the early seventies to label pop music by young bands like Hotdog and
Cinderella, and young singers who sang in
Tagalog/Taglish and English, such as Rico J. Puno and Hadji Alejandro. In 1975, Vicor Music Corporation released the album
The Manila Sound. Manila sound is characterized by
catchy melodic phrases. In its later period, Manila sound was dominated by the
disco mania that swept the Philippines, led by groups such as
VST & Company,
the Boyfriends and
Hagibis, among others. Alternately described as "the marshmallow sound", Manila sound generated a string of calculated radio hits by artists such as
Cinderella,
Apolinario Mabini Hiking Society,
Florante,
Rico J. Puno,
Sharon Cuneta, and many others. Manila sound's unprecedented and meteoric appeal provided viability to a Philippine recording industry that until then had relied on cover versions and imitation of foreign hits to entice consumers. Popular music in the 1970s was disseminated and consumed almost exclusively through AM and later also FM radio, which also measured, as did record sales, which songs were popular. During that period, MTV and music video formats were nearly non-existent (MTV started airing music videos only in 1981) and television was not really considered the means by which record producers and music artists marketed their songs. Popular music was listened to (on the radio) and not viewed (on television), and consequently, many musicians, apart from their band names, were not generally known to listeners. Furthermore, the Internet had not yet been developed and consequently, modern-day promotional mechanisms like streaming formats or YouTube videos, were non-existent. In the genre's later years, lyrics skewed towards
camp humor and parody eventually caused Manila sound to devolve into an explicitly theatrical, if not juvenile, sub-genre, as exemplified by Hagibis (a mimicry of the
Village People) and the Boyfriends, until it diminished in the late 1970s under a wave of dance-oriented hits from American films such as
Saturday Night Fever,
Grease and
Footloose. By the early 1980s,
disco had waned in popularity, mirroring disco's serious backlash and decline that occurred earlier in the
United States. Moreover, musical tastes had changed, moving away from
soft rock into newer musical forms, particularly
adult contemporary, and to a lesser extent
punk rock and
new wave, and radio airplay reflected these changes. Manila sound's laid-back and unpretentious musical style gave way to the intricate, multi-layered, and sometimes symphonic arrangements of
OPM (Original Pilipino Music) that dominated popular, radio-friendly Philippine music starting in the late 1970s until the early 2000s. OPM, spawned initially or heavily influenced by the annual Metro Manila Popular
Music Festival, emerged as the radio favorites. Two of OPM's early and highly successful releases were the songs "
Anak" by
folk rock singer-songwriter
Freddie Aguilar, along with "Kay Ganda ng Ating Musika" by
pianist/
composer/conductor
Ryan Cayabyab. Both songs produced a new generation of Original Pilipino Music represented by artists such as
Kuh Ledesma,
Zsa Zsa Padilla,
Basil Valdez,
Gary Valenciano,
Martin Nievera and later,
Regine Velasquez. ==Resurgence==