There’s something quietly defiant about Bryan Termulo these days.
The former Pinoy Pop Superstar finalist, who once filled Sunday mornings on SOP and ASAP with his smooth, crowd-pleasing vocals, is now writing songs about open roads, ranch landscapes, and the slow, aching passage of uncertain days. He’s traded OPM’s familiar beats for steel-guitar country — and he couldn’t be happier about it.
In a candid conversation with LionhearTV, the US-based Filipino singer opened up about his genre pivot, his life in the American Southwest, and the pandemic-era heartbreak that became his most personal song yet.
Five Years, A New Sound
Bryan has lived in the United States for five years now, and the transformation in his artistry has been anything but accidental. Living in the South-Southwest — far from the Filipino artist clusters on the East and West Coasts — he found himself immersed in country music’s natural habitat.
“Siguro, yung creativity ko dito sa Amerika parang naging wider, when it comes to creating a song,” he shared. “Knowing na gusto ko talaga ay country, mas madali — mas madali kasing gumawa ng isang bagay kapag yung surroundings mo ay favor sa ginagawa mo. The atmosphere, tapos yung sound na naririnig mo, at the people you’re talking with everyday, tapos yung simpleng road trip lang na makikita mo yung mga ranch-ranch — malaking bagay yun, factor yun. Feeling ko countryng-country na yung tinatahak kong path.”
That environment gave him permission to follow a musical instinct he’d been sitting on. Back in the Philippines, he admits, he’d lost track of what the industry even wanted anymore — whether audiences were still into K-drama soundtracks, KPOP, or the rising PPOP wave. So rather than second-guess a market he’d grown distant from, he leaned into what felt true. “While I’m doing country and since I’m enjoying it, nagsti-stick lang ako muna for it,” he said simply.
Going Independent: No Hesitations
Part of what makes Bryan’s creative shift possible is his decision to produce his own music. Free from label expectations and commercial formulas, he approaches every song with a liberating simplicity: make what he loves and accept that it’s always hit or miss.
“When you produce a song, it’s always hit or miss — people will love it, or they’ll just say ‘I like it’ and it ends there,” he acknowledged. “Wala akong hesitations since ako na yung nagpo-produce ng songs ko — gusto ko lang gawin yung gusto ko. But if not, at hindi rin mag-hit, I will still continue to produce ang ganitong genre, kasi nga, ito ang gusto ko at the moment.”
It’s a philosophy that reflects the emotional and creative maturity of an artist who has stepped off the treadmill of trending sounds and found solid ground in personal expression.
‘Almost There’ and the Weight of the Pandemic
Nowhere is that personal expression more raw than in Almost There, the song Bryan wrote during the height of COVID-19. The track’s opening line — “the days are still complicated and I know” — was, in his own words, a hugot moment, drawn straight from the anxiety of living through a world that offered no certainty from one day to the next.
“I am very aware na ang COVID, it’s full of uncertainty — tomorrow okay na ba? Or, the following day okay na ba?” he recalled. “So, hugot line na yun para sa akin, because I know the days are getting complicated. That’s why sinulat ko siya into a song.”
The second verse cut even deeper. The line “my dreams have been shattered” captured the particular grief of a performer stripped of his stage — not by failure, but by a pandemic that quietly rewrote everyone’s job description. “Ang hugot ko gusto ko lang kumanta, mag-perform, pero parang hindi yun ang nangyayari sa akin. Parang, imbes na maging performer ako, parang naiba yung nature of job ko,” he said. “And then — ‘little by little, things are getting better.’ Yun.”
Still Connected, Always Filipino
For all his creative independence, Bryan hasn’t drifted from the community he built back home. He still cheers on former colleagues from afar — messaging La Diva and Jona when he sees them performing together online, complimenting their harmonies, catching up on lost time through quick exchanges that carry years of shared history.
He misses the Sunday rituals most: the weekly songs, the band rehearsals, the easy camaraderie of being in the same room as people who knew the same stages you did. “Every Sunday may bagong song, tapos every band rehearsal magkikita-kita kayo — lahat sila,” he said of his SOP and ASAP days. “Lahat ng nakasabayan ko, syempre, nami-miss ko.”
When Filipino artists do tour near him, he’s the one making the trip. And when big names like Piolo Pascual and Sam Milby came through his area during the pandemic, they didn’t just add him to the lineup — they pulled him to dinner afterward. “Imbes na part lang ako ng show nila, sasabihin nila, ‘Hindi, isama natin si Bryan, magdi-dinner tayo, after!’” he recalled warmly. “Yung mga ganong gestures — na-aappreciate ko yun.”
From Pinoy Pop Superstar to country songwriter in the American Southwest, Bryan Termulo’s journey is proof that reinvention doesn’t have to be loud to be real. Sometimes it sounds like an open road, a guitar, and a line that’s been waiting years to be written.
