He was the love of her life, her Mr. Right. The very sound of his voice made her melt. He brought out the best and the worst in her until he left and only the pain remained.
It’s the age-old tale of heartbreak so many can relate to, and the reason why there is a universal appeal to Miss Ramonne’s recently-released WSK Series. The eight-song album is a self-penned songwriting journey through Ramonne’s own personal heartbreak over a failed relationship that is almost visceral in its sense of suffering, yet equally rewarding in its sense of catharsis.
The WSK Series sees Miss Ramonne taking us through the various stages of heartbreak: from denial to anger, depression, bargaining, and, finally, acceptance. With her soulful, smoky alto voice as the guiding instrument and a breathtakingly diverse range of production styles as a suitable conduit for the journey, the WSK Series packs an emotional wallop.
In the album’s eponymous opener, WSK (Wasak), a slow, dark contemporary R&B number, Miss Ramonne sings with a quiet, understated fervor as she struggles to come to terms with her own heartbreak: “Wasak na wasak…pero baliw pa rin sa’yo”, Ramonne sings, lamenting that sometimes, no matter how hard you fight, it can be in vain if only one side is fighting for the relationship: “’Di ko kaya ang lumaban | Kung ako na lang ang naiwan”.
WSK’s heavy sense of pain gives way to a weary expression of emotional unavailability in TKL (Teka Lang). “Masakit ang puso kong kakawasak lang”, Ramonne implores to any potential new lovers – please wait up; I am too heartbroken to entertain new love for now, she says. Set to a slightly more uptempo instrumental that nostalgically recalls 90’s R&B, the song is almost like a sigh of exhaustion from an overwhelmed heart, until it builds up into a raspy scream of insistence, as Miss Ramonne repeats “teka lang, teka lang” into the ending fadeout.
The album’s third track, BKT (Bakit), finds Miss Ramonne questioning why she is no longer with the love of her life. Singing in a deeper register and in several different speeds in perhaps the jazziest, most experimental song on the album, Ramonne’s confusion is echoed by BKT’s almost chaotic nature – as if the many shifts in time signature represent the overload of rapid-fire thoughts playing in her head.“Rinig ang iyong multo kahit nakapikit”, she sings, longing for her lover’s voice as if it was that of a person who has passed on. An excellent synth organ solo rounds out one of the more enjoyable, quirky listens on the WSK Series.
At this stage of her journey, Ramonne is still hoping against all hope that she can be chosen again, an emotion that she dwells on in the previously-unreleased song PNO (Paano), which represents the bargaining stage of heartbreak. Four tracks into the album, Miss Ramonne finally reveals what she calls ‘the juiciest part of the story’, where all this angst is coming from: “Eh ‘di ba sinabi mo na ako ang kailangan mo…pano naging siya ako?” – the lover who spurned Ramonne chose another woman over her. “Pwede bang siya na lang ako? Ako ulit ang piliin mo?” Miss Ramonne writes, almost begging to be chosen again, her pleas set to the hardest, most aggressive beat on the album, almost like a melodic rap song. The two different verses Miss Ramonne sings in counterpoint at the end of PNO (Paano) almost make it seem like there are multiple voices battling chaotically in her head as she desperately bargains to be chosen again.
Then the mood quiets down for DKL (Di Ko Alam), an emotional, poignant piano-driven ballad that is easily one of the standouts of the entire album. The song begins with a series of beautifully-written romantic metaphors that seem to come from a very personal place: “siya ang regalo ng langit sa akin…siya ang bituin sa aking buwan “. Gradually, a sense of pain seeps in: “Di maipaliwanag na kirot sa’king dibdib”. Miss Ramonne sings the main thrust of the song in a desperate, soulful near-growl: she doesn’t know what is going on in her life anymore. The song’s overriding message seems to be that it’s okay to be sad, and to take your time to get your mind & heart where they need to be.
After wringing our hearts dry, Miss Ramonne pulls back and goes a little more casual on HI. Released in 2016, HI was the first song Miss Ramonne had ever written and released as a single. The song is written from the perspective of someone meeting her ex after a long time, and is appropriately lighter and breezier than the songs before it, as if to feign the casualness of a subtly emotionally-charged encounter. The song is a good palate cleanser and an illustration of how diverse the selection of songs on the WSK Series is. “Kamusta ka na? Ang sabi nila sakin ay OK ka na…buti ka pa”, Miss Ramonne almost sarcastically sneers. “Naaalala po ba nung tayo pang dal’wa ang magkasama?”
In her live renditions of HI, Miss Ramonne would inject a little more spice into the song, introducing a full-on rant in the middle of it, complete with explicit barbs: “malandi ka, mukha silang paa”. Her fanbase has reacted in such a wildly positive way to the addition that she has incorporated it into all her subsequent performances of HI.
The home stretch of the WSK Series finally sees Miss Ramonne accepting the situation and doing her best to move on, starting with the album’s penultimate song, OK. One of her most recent compositions, OK was based off a New Year’s resolution Ramonne made in 2019 after she began to realize how unfair she was being on herself by continuing to wallow in her own heartbreak. “OK na sakin na wala ka…OK na sakin na hindi na ako ang iyong kasama”, she muses to the most danceable beat on the album, reflecting a sense of optimism and relief that is very much earned. However, in the last line of the song, Miss Ramonne still acknowledges: “Mahal kita…sinasabi kong mahal kita”, notably choking up as she sings the line.
The album brings it home with the anthemic Ganda Ka, what Miss Ramonne considers the “ribbon on top of the WSK Series”. In the album’s final track, Miss Ramonne speaks in the second person, encouraging her audience – and herself – to embrace their own individual beauty. The song is an affirmation of self-love, after all the negative feelings Ramonne’s own heartbreak made her feel. “Piliin mo namang maging masaya”, she implores all of us.
Ganda Ka is, suitably, the most upbeat and optimistic song on the album – the big payoff, the dawn after the darkness. The message of the song – and of the album as a whole – seems to be to stop trying to deny your feelings, and to learn how to move on in spite of them and love yourself again, after you’ve lost yourself loving someone else for so long. Miss Ramonne says she wants to “think positively [about who I am]…even if I may be making up some of these positive feelings for now, I will eventually get there for real.”
The WSK Series is that rare feat in the annals of OPM: a rising star of a singer, spurned by her love, putting her pain to paper in a cohesive story several years in the making, that explores the emotional depths of heartbreak in almost excruciating levels of detail. There is a quiet emotional intensity that underlies every track on the WSK Series that bursts forth into full-blown, unbridled passion in just the right places.
The level of craftsmanship here calls to mind Beyoncé’s own landmark breakup album: the similarly stark gut punch that is Lemonade. The approach works because in both cases, the songwriter’s idea was to write something that moved herself; to find an outlet for her own intense emotions in the most sincere, heart-on-sleeve manner she could possibly muster. As a result, the voice Miss Ramonne produces in the WSK Series is something that so many others can hear their own stories of heartbreak in – and her work can be the soundtrack to their own stories of redemption, too.