ALYSON Moves Past City Pop Nostalgia on  New Album ‘After Ours’

ALYSON is a band that likes to challenge itself. The city pop outfit consisting of vocalist Pio Ligot, drummer and producer Marcus Mababangloob, bassist Miguel Erfe, lead guitarist Luis Uy, and keyboardist Easel Manes, is never done rounding out the polished sounds of Japanese-styled pop music. ALYSON has already gone through different changes and released music through previous iterations, beginning as an indie rock band that put out its debut self-titled EP in 2018.

Years after the release of their debut, the band underwent a rebrand post-pandemic. From their appearance to their sound, ALYSON transformed into a band nobody would have expected. The left turn ended up being a city pop direction. In 2023, they released DEFINITELY LOVE!, the album that contains the hit tracks “Kiliti” and “Feels So Good.” They wore matching suits, first beige and eventually all red, bringing them everywhere from tight basement shows to big concerts. In 2025, they turned to the color blue, matching the feelings and themes of their current album After Ours. This time around, however, ALYSON would rather push forward than rehash the concepts and songwriting that made city pop work in the first place.

“City Pop is a very clear thing that people have an understanding of, or I think they have an understanding of,” Mababangloob tells Rolling Stone Philippines. “We never wanted to box ourselves by calling city pop a sort of genre or a set of textures that are a closed box.”

The band cites a ton of influences, such as Michael Jackson, Casiopea drummer Akira Jimbo, and virtuoso guitarist Masayoshi Takanaka, all of whom they choose to learn from in spirit as they continue to improve. Back during the recording of the debut album in 2023, Ligot would constantly remind himself of how much skill they still lacked, or in his own words, “nababanoan.” 

“All we just wanted to do was — given this newfound skill and newfound appreciation — gusto namin gumawa ng ganitong music,” Ligot says. “And this is what After Ours ended up being. Parang that musical growth nga, that maturity in sound, ‘yun ‘yung naging ending.”

Mababangloob observed the technicality of city pop players throughout the decades. He thought the technical side of their showmanship was unmatched. The band applied that mindset during the songwriting process of After Ours, turning the genre’s constraints into a tangible advantage by choosing to record everything live in the same room. Ligot practiced his vocals day in and day out to become better and meet the expectations that came with a sophomore release. 

“Coming off from Definitely Love, the vocals were very manageable,” Ligot says. “This one, it was really challenging because of the syllabication and everything. There’s really no time to breathe during those moments. But like I said, it’s time to get good.”

ALYSON: City Pop Beyond the Formula

In the genre that is city pop, the band would rather approach the sound as a way to improve instead of boxing themselves into the confines of a genre. Mababangloob points out that not everyone in the Japanese city pop scene at the time even referred to it as such. 

“[Bands at the time] were just pulling from so many different places because they listened to so much music and then they recontextualized it into something that they understand,” Mababangloob says. “And this was very, very prominent in the Showa era, the ‘70s to ‘80s. Japanese pop music scene, where they got a hold of the likes of Michael Jackson and Toto, and then they really turned it into their own thing. That’s also true in terms of Manila Sound, where we were taking what we got from the West and making it our own thing.”

Ligot’s hope for ALYSON and the new album moving forward is a greater awareness that once a genre reaches its apex, it also has the chance to evolve, not just as a trend but as a sound that people continue to innovate on. However, the band acknowledges that city pop already carries a novel concept from the outset. In return, Ligot and the rest of the band want to show audiences that on After Ours, the music has the potential to go beyond the genre description. 

“Once [city pop] becomes the thing that’s heard, whether it’s on stream or radio, it might evolve into something new instead of something of a novelty,” Ligot says. “It comes down to the marketing of this sound in general. The way that it would really evolve is when people hear this genre for the first time, [eventually] they’ll have their own interpretations.”

Recontextualizing City Pop

ALYSON isn’t interested in becoming revivalists of a genre that reached its pinnacle in a bygone era of soft rock, ballads, and improvisation. Somehow, they make the formula work through their continued skill-building and development as musicians. 

“We’re not doing one-of-one recreations. We’re never interested in sounding like a carbon copy of Masayoshi or Katsuri Yamashita or all of that,” Mababangloob says. “We kind of just knew that we wanted the best pieces of that and turned it into something that in our own urban context.”

After the release of After Ours, the band remains hopeful about how Filipino musicians will carry the genre to new heights. Whether through a different songwriting style, a synth line, or their own twist on the sound, ALYSON believes city pop is in good hands as long as artists continue pushing beyond its familiar sensibilities. 

“Given the right amount of listens, the right amount of exposure to the genre, somebody, whether it be us or an artist in the future, somebody will redefine what this sound is and what it can be,” Mababangloob says.