SB19’s Stell Reveals What Inspired His Love For Music

P-pop royalty Stell looks back and shares the beginnings of his journey with music, especially who and what got him into it — and more — on this week’s episode of Billboard Philippines Volumes.

It took a while but the SB19 member finally made his solo debut last June with “Room” — a single that not only serves as an anthem of confidence and empowerment for Stell but, ultimately, a combined showcase of both his top-notch vocal virtuosity and his polished dance prowess. These two skills have always been intertwined with the hitmaker’s artistic journey, tracing their roots back to the the early days of his youth. And today, Stell takes us back in time to where and how it all began.

“With music, sobrang raw ng experience ko and memory ko with music — with karaoke talaga (With music, my experience and my memory was really raw — it was really with karaoke),” shares Stell when asked about some of the first memories he has with music. For Stell’s family, he reveals, karaoke was not merely for special occasions. Instead, they were an everyday occurrence in their household, with his parents always playing music on CDs and all of them just singing along.

“Ganun talaga ‘yung nakalakihan ko (That’s really what I grew up with),” says Stell, sharing how he would often sing tracks like “The Power of Love,” songs from Celine Dion, and even OPM classics like Ice Seguerra’s “Pagdating Ng Panahon” and Nonoy Zuñiga’s “Doon Lang” as a kid, which has led him to remember them by heart to this day. “Ganun ‘yung mga kinalakihan ko. Dahil ‘yun sa parents ko! Sobrang raw talaga. Karaoke talaga lahat (That’s what I grew up with. It was because of my parents! It was really raw. All of it was really karaoke).”

“When I was kid, I remember, mas gusto ko dancing kaysa singing (When I was a kid, I remember, I liked dancing more than singing). But my parents insisted on me doing voice lessons,” Stell discloses, when asked if he always knew if singing would become his eventual career path, stating how, back then, singing was purely a family bonding activity for him.

Despite Stell’s disapproval of his parents’ idea of him taking voice lessons, he eventually went to one, courtesy of his grandfather’s best friend who also taught Filipino bossa nova icon Sitti. Stell’s grandfather accompanied him to his first lesson, where he inexplicably found himself being put on the spot and asked to sing something immediately, leaving the young Stell perplexed and unable to think of a song to sing. Eventually, his grandfather’s best friend took to the piano and started playing Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” asking Stell to sing the iconic track. Stell, being able to inherently sing the song thanks to his family’s countless karaoke sessions, obliged. His grandfather would later tell Stell that the instructor liked his voice and has decided to mentor him. However, Stell still did not like the idea of pursuing singing, stating how weirded out he was from being asked to sing the Celine Dion classic. This led him to not continue the lessons.

“Mas gusto ko talaga dancing. E ayaw pumayag. Sabi ng… lolo ko dapat daw mag-singing ako (I really liked dancing more. But they wouldn’t approve. My grandfather stated that I should do singing),” continues Stell with his story, sharing how he applied for a taekwondo class just so he would be too busy to do any singing lessons. However, as Stell jokingly shares, this plan would backfire on him as he was immediately asked to do splits on his first day, leading him to also drop the class after the first lesson. “Sabi ko, ‘Bakit naman ganun? Ang malas ko naman! Hindi ko nagugustuhan ‘yung first day (I said, ‘Why is it like that? I’m so unlucky! I don’t like the first days).”

With this, Stell’s resolve to become a dancer strengthened, despite, as he shares, knowing that he didn’t know how to dance that much when he was younger. Eventually, however, Stell would unlock a deeper love for singing in high school, courtesy of him and his friends often doing karaoke when going out, which, he shares, was a very popular activity for them. His friends would ask him to sing and he would oblige. “I don’t want to say this, pero feeling ko talaga, like, ‘yung singing, skill ko na siya nung bata ako (I don’t want to say this, but I really feel, like, singing, it’s a skill of mine that I’ve had since I was a kid),” Stell shyly states, noting how his voice has always been able achieve high pitched ranges – something that his parents note has not changed since he was younger.

“Kapag kumakanta, sobrang kampante ako. Nung high school, ‘pag sinabi sa akin, ‘O, sample ka naman. Kanta ka,’ kakanta talaga ako… Bibirit birit ako,” he further shares, noting how, on the other hand, when people asked him to dance, he would get shy because he knew he was not good at it despite knowing how to – a clear opposite of how he felt towards his singing back then.

However, Stell would eventually find a harmonious and consistent balance between these two skills rooted in his childhood, utilizing them to the best of his abilities as a member of SB19 and now, with his newly established solo career, effectively empowering him to showcase his talents at the grandest of scales.

In addition to how he got into music, the P-pop hitmaker also discussed how his fellow SB19 members became instrumental in him bravely taking the necessary steps to become a soloist, how an upcoming song of his written by National Artist Ryan Cayabyab (Mr. C) came to be, his debut solo EP Room, and more.

Watch the full episode of Billboard Philippines Volumes featuring Stell below: