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It takes a certain vitality to be charming and present after a transpacific flight, and its evidently hyper present in this emerging Filipino star, as Denise Julia still that life-giving aura was present even after 15 hours of recycled air. On her latest release, LOVE AGAIN, her classic, throwback R&B sound comes to the forefront: slow tempos that mirror a fluttering, love anxious heart & layered with her rich harmonic vocals that just pull the emotions out of your pores. The whole EP has a sweaty cadence to it, a sound that's sticky to your skin, in short a perfect hot summer day vibe. Happy she joined us in studio after such a long journey, we dug into love, comfort food and much more here:

OnesToWatch: Who are you? 

Denise Julia: My name is Denise Julia.
I'm a Pisces. Very emotional. I'm from Dundal, Manila, Philippines. If you search it up, you probably wouldn't expect that I came from there because there’s a lot of poverty. 


Why would people not assume that? 

Because of the way I carry myself, I'm very into fashion…

Does everyone think you're from ABG? 

Yeah, very ABG. I guess they would say my style is very Westernized, because of how liberated I am with showing skin and all that stuff.
It's not very common yet where I’m from. That country is very Catholic. One of the most Catholic, I think, in the world, because Spain conquered us for 330 years. 

How long have you been ambitious to the point of wanting to release music? You are very Pisces with your personal stories – when did you want to share your stories with strangers? 

Well, I didn’t start with music. I was very into public speaking and being a stage actress. So I just really love being in front of people, putting myself out there. It just so happened that I was singing one day and someone was like, you got a really nice voice, because I was very shy when it came to singing and music. After someone pointed out that I might be good at music, I just started writing my own songs, starting at the age of like 13.
For a while, I didn't show it to anyone. I was writing for like 5 years secretly.
I had 10 notebooks filled back to back with conversations, secrets, puppy love and whoever I was into that moment. Like I said, Pisces.

Well, you have been songwriting for a while. So what would you say your process is? What are you most comfortable with? Melody, toplining, lyrics, ideas? 

It's different every time. I started with just lyrics because, when you do improv, you're quick with talking and speaking and making stuff up on the spot. So whenever I would feel something, my first instinct is to just write, write, write it down. But once I started getting into the music aspect of it all, I really loved freestyling. Back home, I would do everything. I would record myself in a really shitty ass laptop with a very worn down microphone. I would just freestyle with free beats. Eventually, I needed to make something that felt like myself and sounds like the music that I grew up listening to, which was a lot of Mariah Carey, Beyoncé, Aaliyah.

You got some Aaliyah energy. 

Oh, I love that.
Thank you. Back home, music was everywhere, it’s a very musically driven environment. Karaoke left and right. So it was very natural for me to learn production on my own, because I wanted my sound to lean a certain way, sound like my influences, which was R&B. And that's just how it came to be. I would make something from scratch, a beat, and then I would freestyle.

One thing I'm always impressed by is when there's limitations to people in terms of their resources, their equipment, or their gear – I feel like those people improvise and exceed the sort of sum of their parts, if you will. Did you feel, potentially, that not having a flawless, perfect recording set up when you were younger, helped you get creative? 

100%. This is something that I see with every single genius that I look up to. They're the ones who aren't trained or didn't really study it because they're forced to think outside of the box and to make use of what's around them. And that's what I did. Technically, I forced myself to learn about music theory before I even knew what music theory was. I would just discover things by ear, I didn't even know theory was a skill. 

How did you learn by ear? 

I don't know. I just wanted to make something that sounded like the things I was inspired by. You just pull every single string that you can pull out your body to make something that sounds good, to your standard. But, until now, I wasn't aware that that's not normal. 

Let's touch on your most recent work and project. How old are these songs? What was the genesis for the project? What's it all about? 

So, LOVE AGAIN, is the first body of work that I made outside of my country. 5 out of 6 songs were made out here in the States and it's my first year out here in America. It's been a pretty wild ride. 

Are you enjoying it? 

I'm... Balling. I'm having the best time in my life. I feel like a free bird, but it didn't start out like that, though. I was having a lot of trouble.
I was having a hard time adjusting to how fast paced and straightforward everybody is out here, especially since I moved to the East Coast first and I realized that it's different from the West. It's a hustle culture. But then that reminded me of home, the grit of it all, which is why over time I felt that I fit in here more. I like having a hard time. It makes me want to just grind better and harder. But, it was my first year in the States and I was going through my first ever breakup at the same time. I remember moving out here was probably the biggest dream of mine since I had consciousness, but once I did, funnily enough, it was the lowest point of my life. I lost a lot of people at that time. So I was like, why is it different? Why is it not living up to this expectation that I had in my head? Why am I not enjoying it? Shouldn't I feel happy? But I really wasn't. I felt like I lost so much passion for music and what I did. Love is such a big part of me, and losing someone I love, it was the worst. It was pretty bad. I was going through it. I felt so ready to quit. Find something else to do. But eventually, I did find love again, which is the title for the EP. It sprung out of nowhere just by putting myself out there again. I feel so liberated. That's what basically kick started the EP. I wrote about what I was going through in real time. So, the EP became this full circle moment from the beginning of a breakup, back to finding love again. So that's the theme of it all. 

Beautiful. You seem ambitious. Do you have ambitions for the EP specifically? Do you want it to unlock something? Do you want it to make your audience feel a certain way? 

I just want to touch more people to be honest. I mean I'm out here, clearly there's a goal. If I wanted to just stay in my country and make music out there. I would have just stayed there, but clearly the goal is to bridge the rest of the world to where I came from. Hopefully my experiences and the music that I make would achieve that. 

Love it. Let’s pivot to some fun questions. “Killing Me Softly” is an amazing song. What's your favorite Filipino ballad to do karaoke? 


I already know one. This is the first Filipino song that I would sing in karaoke. 
It's called Bukas na Lang Kita Mamahalin

I will guess that's a big hit. 

To translate what that title is, it’s “I'll just love you tomorrow,” something like that. I'll love you another day. It's hard to translate things from Filipino because it's so deep. The meaning is, I have so much love today, can I even love you the same way tomorrow? 
It's about loving someone at the wrong time. 

Beautiful. If you could dream up your perfect festival billing, you can be the headliner, you can support, but anyone can perform, dead or alive. Who would you put on it?

Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Beyonce. Aretha Franklin. Anita Baker. 


Okay, wow, you went for the greats of music. Who would you duet with? 

Ah, tough one. Mariah Carey. 


That feels intimidating. 


I know. I was hesitating. 

You seem like someone, like I mentioned, ambitious, driven. Do you relax? 
If so, what do you do when you relax? 

I'm with the fishies. I'm by the beach. Probably boating somewhere in the Philippines.
Eating mangoes. 

Obviously food's a huge part of Filipino culture. If everyone pulls up and you're forced to contribute and make something, what's your go-to dish? 

I have a specific restaurant that I would go to when I'm depressed. It's called Athois Porkchop. It's a pork chop, but it's cooked in a silog. It's fried rice with egg and sauces and the pork chop. 
And I could eat 10 plates of that in one day. 

Perfect comfort food. Last couple of questions. If you could go back in time or go into the future, would you? Where would you go? 

I wouldn't. I don't like to dwell. 

More people answer it like that than I suspect. 

I don't like to dwell in the past and I don't want to know it's ahead of me because I like to live in the moment. Otherwise, it ruins it. If I know that I'll fail in the future, would I still keep doing what I'm doing? I don't know. It's always gonna be in the back of my head. 

If you could kill a fashion trend or reignite a fashion trend, is there something you're sick of or you wish there was more of? 

High waisted skinny jeans. 

You're over it? 

Fuck that shit. 

Why do you hate them so much? 

I'm thinking for my body type, because I have a short torso and it doesn't look cute. It's for models. Not everybody's a model. I like the short, the low waisted trend from the 2000s. I feel like that should live on forever. 

I would love a non-music recommendation. Something you've enjoyed, found value in, you'd love to share with a friend.

There’s this Filipino thing. We call it gin bilog back home. We pour pure gin on a bowl with fruit and we light it on fire. 

Caramelize the fruit? 


Yeah, whatever that does. 

What’s the setting where you’d do that? 

It's a thing that we do with family or friends or whoever, honestly. It could be when someone died, it could be just a random Tuesday. It's very common in the provinces too. 

That sounds fun. I would also love a music recommendation.

Do you know Division? From Toronto, like 10 years ago. They never reached as many people as they should have. I still feel like their Morning After album is so good and it has to be part of the greatest R&B albums of all time. That's probably a hot take. They're always my number one top artist every single year. Since 2016. 


Anything you want to end on, anything you want to say? 


Listen to my new EP. It's a good one. LOVE AGAIN. Dedicated to whoever. There's a song for every stage of love you're in, whether it be the heartbreak stage or the moving on stage or the sexy stage or the toxic stage, there's a song for every single stage you're at. 

Love it. Thank you so much. That was a lot of fun.