NEW COLLABORATION
Over October intertwines with The Ridleys for perfect wedding song
IT might come as a surprise, but bands Over October and The Ridleys have been intertwined personally for a long time now. Vocalists of the bands Josh Buizon and Benny Manaligod respectively knew each other since childhood, considering that their parents are friends. Now, both bands have coiled their music for their first ever collaboration.
Josh initially started writing the song, coming up with its first verse and its first chorus. However, he got stuck along the way, struggling to finish writing it. This is where he reached out to Benny, asking him, “Can you help me finish it?”
Explaining why he reached out to Benny, Josh said, “Magaling si Benny, he’s really good at writing lyrics so I sent it to him and he sent me back a draft with the lyrics.” Josh added that he also asked Benny, “Why don’t we do something for Diego?”
Benny’s cousin and a friend of Josh, Diego, is about to be married with his fiancé Alison. Both vocalists decided that the song they were working on would be the perfect wedding present for the couple.
Upon getting Benny’s version of the song, Josh’s reaction, he shared, was “Wow, this is great.”
However, Josh admitted, “The backstory of the lyrics of the song are not really directly about Diego and Alison, but it’s more of just what every couple who is committing their lives to one another should be like.”
“So it’s more than that, it’s more of that kind of a backstory of the song rather than specific to their relationship, so it applies to all of the relationships,” he added.
It was a decision that drew the two bands Over October and The Ridleys to work together, intertwined per se, to create the perfect song about getting married.
Lua, Over October’s second guitarist, noted, “I think ‘yung writing style ni Benny for that one is parang… wedding vow ‘yung verse na sinulat niya.”
Collaborating process
THE collaboration was a “long-time coming,” according to Lua, since fans have requested a collaboration of the bands in the past.
“Matagal na siyang balak din mangyari,” Lua said.
Because they all knew each other for quite some time now, working together was, in a way, easier than expected. Lua shared that they were all already friends before the collaboration happened, and rapport was not difficult to establish.
“I think it helped din na friends na kami to begin with,” the guitarist noted.
Adding Anton Rodriguez back in the band, there were three guitarists in total for “Intertwine.”
Reflecting on the experience, Lua shared, “We had to balance all of the parts… to the point nag mag-g-give way talaga for the other guitarist, and ano siya fun experience [since] its the first time in a while na I took the back seat in terms of the guitar parts.”
The only stumbling block they had to surpass, according to Josh, is scheduling. “Everybody has their own schedules—actually that was one of the bigger challenges in terms of putting the whole thing together was more of the scheduling.”
He added, “In terms of the song, it actually took over a year to finish because me and Benny were like sending it back and forth and we also had other commitments.”
Josh shared that Over October members have regular day jobs, a field beyond the scenes of music.
Josh further explained, “It was during the pandemic pa when it happened so I never actually got to sit down with Benny and like we never sat down in the same room to write together. It was all online so I would send him lyrics and then he would send me back the lyrics with an edit and then back and forth lang talaga kami. So that was actually the one that took most of the time—the sending it back and forth.”
Nevertheless, Over October and The Ridleys were able to put the music together, offering to the world and to Diego and Alison the perfect song about having lives intertwined. The song was released last November 25.
As of writing, “Intertwine” has 439k streams on Spotify, and was recently added to the Viral Hits Playlist PH.
“Intertwine” is available on all music-streaming platforms.