Where have our composers gone?

[the_wildthing]

Where are the Filipino composers who made really nice love songs in the last century? Lyrcists who are poets... who write from the heart... who can say exactly what YOU feel?

It seems every other new artist is simply rehashing old hits and putting them into an album. Maybe it's a good formula to make a quick buck for the producer. It seems the songs we sing to are still the same songs we heard when we were younger.

You take an old hit, get a good singer to sing it again, and you have a 50% chance of another hit. It makes good business sense. Even ABS-CBN takes hits from the last century and asks Erik Santos or some other singing contest champion to sing it.

Is it because there are no talented composers anymore? Have the current ones lost the inspiration?

Is it because the producers are under pressure to make more money because of the cost of producing an album? Can they no longer pay for original work?

Is it a sign of the bad economic condition? More new artists and more new songs seem to have been produced during times when the PHISIX was on a prolonged uptrend.

Maybe there's Ogie Alcasid. But he usually contributes just one song to another artist's album. And even then, is it a hit? Can you sing it from memory? Maybe you will remember more of his songs from the 90s.

Surely there are artists writing songs of angst, broken hearts, or even politics, but rock songs generally don't need good lyrics.

So where have they gone?