How can we forget the piquant bite of ube cheese pandesal, bubbly foams of dalgona coffee, and the endless loop of BENEE’s “Supalonely,” a.k.a. the inanimate characters of the first wave of quarantine? These mundanities served comfort to our isolated energies.
But for 21-year-old singer-songwriter Jason Dhakal, producing a song became the perfect quarantine trip. After two years in the making—and drawing inspiration from Mariah Carey, Erykah Badu, and Amy Winehouse while he’s at it—Jason has finally dropped his quarantine brainchild: his newest neo-soul single, “Can’t Get Enough.”
“For me, it’s more like… escape, you know? I feel like I wrote that at the height of the pandemic,” Jason tells Scout.
“Can’t Get Enough” serves a soft and dream-like theme that shifts into an all-out playful beat. Besides its subtle start and groovy transition, Jason shared that it also spotlights queer love at its peak. He says, “For me it’s about queer love, like love in general, we can all relate to that easily. You know the feeling.”
“I feel like every queer person has felt like disincluded and you know, not allowed at the table, all these things. I want to be able to make sure that, you know, at any point or like at any job that we have… you give them the platform, you give them the space that they can talk whatever they want to talk and do whatever the fuck they want to do,” Jason adds.
The soft theme of this single is just one of the best parts of this piece. Accompanying the sultry lyrics is a harmonious collective of live guitars, keys, horns and drums. “This is my first time that I got to produce [a] song [with] like a live drum, like live trumpets… this is a no-laptop thing anymore,” Dhakal said.
“Can’t Get Enough” by Jason Dhakal is now available on all streaming platforms.
Read more:
Leaders of the New Cool: Jason Dhakal
6 tracks for your Pride playlist, as picked by local queer artists
Your homegrown faves are on 88rising’s first PH mixtape drop
Press photos by Borgy Angeles, courtesy of Amplified Entertainment