David Young turns heartbreak stories into debut single

MANILA, Philippines — For any songwriter, both newbie and an established one, a composition begins with toying with an idea and following its lead. Once the rhythm to create music has been set, the tunesmith can complete such a task in days or even weeks.

For singer David Young, he simply carried out a writing routine to see where his creativity would take him, and voila, his debut single, Long For Your Love, emerged from that “personal session” and was recently released by Star Music.

“It came about one night because I tasked myself with writing a poem every single night to get my creative juices flowing for songwriting,” said David, who has appeared as a guest artist in the shows of Kuh Ledesma and Vina Morales, in a virtual interview with The STAR, “and that was one of my nightly poems, I wrote the verse and the chorus.”

These key parts of a song were mainly inspired by stories of heartbreak and unrequited love, according to David, that he has seen in films and heard from people.

“So, that’s where I got the inspiration for the song,” added he, who composed it on a piano. “It took me two days to write the lyrics, but the music took a few weeks.” Afterwards, he said, he recorded a demo in his house and forwarded it to Jonathan Manalo, the prolific songwriter and creative director of ABS-CBN Music.

David composed and wrote the song in January of this year, and recorded it in April. “I would just like to say that sir Jonathan really created a wonderful studio atmosphere and so, I thank him a lot for that. And I thank him that he gave me the time to record with him. He then worked on the song. I heard the final mix around, I think, the end of August or early September,” the singer recalled.

Long For Your Love was finally released on Sept. 27.

Asked to talk about the song, genre-wise, David answered, “I would say the song more closely resembles the style of Stephen Sanchez and (his) Until I Found You and those kinds of songs.” He shared that it is guitar-led, with a soft-rock element and vintage throwback feel to it. “It’s very soft, very mellow, you know your classic love song. It more resembles the style of Stephen Sanchez.”

His baritone voice, as he described it, sits and complements well with the melody.

My voice is still quite soft and it reminds me of, I’m not saying I’m this person, but Elvis (Presley),” said the 19-year-old crooner. “I would say at this early stage of my career, it’s a soft, mellow baritone.”

David also agreed to the idea that Long For Your Love would serve as a preview of what songs he would endeavor to release in the future. He would probably keep “the same structure of soft, mellow tunes.”

“I would say that this song is kinda sort of setting the tone for the rest of the songs that I’ll be making in the near future or that I wish to make in the near future. Who knows? I might experiment further with my style, but again, if you know songwriters like Stephen Sanchez and Laufey, they do experiment, they have their own styles, but they’re able to sort of mix in different elements from different inspirations and that’s what I hope to do with my music.”

What was it like recording his first-ever song? It now forms part of his core memory as an artist.

“Prior to that, I had no experience recording a song, just the demos that I made in my room from time to time, but being in a professional studio and recording, it was very different and it was nice though that sir Jonathan was showing me the ropes. It was a wonderful experience and it was nice to see (him) at work and to see him in his zone, but what I had done was simply record my vocals for the song. We would play the song one whole take and I would simply sing along to the instrumental and that’s how the recording process was done for my vocals,” said he.

Given his surname, David has time to discover more about being a singer and songwriter. He also expressed interest in writing songs for other artists.

“I would love to be my own independent singer-songwriter you know and I always love collaborating with people,” said he. “Of course, it’s an honorable thing when somebody gives you their own piece of work and asks you if you could interpret it. I also love to do that for other people as well, you know be able to come to them and show them, ‘Hey, this is what I made for you.’ I think it’s very nice when you think in terms of collaboration in the music industry.”

With that, there’s more to look forward to from the Star Music artist David Young.

(David Young’s Long For Your Love can now be streamed on digital platforms.)