THE ALBUM TRACKS
you only like me when i’m pretty
“you only like me when i’m pretty” is the opening of my debut album. This song was inspired by a Filipina owned brand I came across back in 2021 called, “you only like me when i’m pretty”, whose purpose was to “spread awareness and reduce stigmas of mental health” for those “who are uncomfortable with the reality of mental health, and are disturbed when a person’s mind is no longer ‘pretty’”. Out of inspiration, I wanted to write about how I’m sometimes so afraid of being perceived differently because of my mental illness.
Whether it was shaming myself for behaving/thinking a certain way, hiding who I am to fit in, or repressing all that I was feeling because I was told to “suck it up”, it made me always want to stay “pretty” for the sake of being liked. Accompanied with a beautiful string arrangement by my friend, Anne Navarro, the cinematic production contrasts my self-deprecating lyrics to encompass this conflict within myself of either accepting who I am and risking not pleasing everyone or confining myself only to disappoint myself. I felt that this was the perfect opening to a lot of similar themes explored throughout the album, starting with my doubts.
CREDITS
Written by: Yna Pineda
Produced by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Performed and Arranged by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Production: Yna Pineda
Strings: Anne Navarro
Mixing: Michael Leto
Mastering: Liam Manansala Reyes
chasing daydreams
“chasing daydreams” is a song about the feeling of being immersed in the many different fantasies I wish I could have existed in, which deviated me from reality. Whether it was daydreaming about who I wanted to be, overthinking about different decisions I made and didn’t make, or being consumed by the lives of other people—I always got stuck in those fantasies. As I got older, I started chasing a lot of these different fantasies. In turn, it cost me my relationships, my presence, and my love for the people I cared about because I was so fixated on alternate realities rather than the one I was currently living in. So instead of trying to make the most of the life I had now, I fell into a helpless nature of accepting defeat because I knew I would fail to become this fantastical ideal version of myself I knew I could never be.
CREDITS
Written by: Yna Pineda
Produced by: Yna Pineda & Samuel Aaron
Vocal Performed and Arranged by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Production: Yna Pineda
Synths/Keys: Yna Pineda & Samuel Aaron
Guitars: Samuel Aaron & Josh Oliveros
Bass/Vocoder: Samuel Aaron
Engineering: Yna Pineda and Samuel Aaron
Drums: Romello
Mixing: Michael Leto
Mastering: Liam Manansala Reyes
lonely
“lonely” is one of my more experimental productions on this album and a collaboration with one of my talented friends and producer, Saint Lewis, alongside an insane guitar solo by the one and only, Josh Oliveros. I wrote this about 4 years ago when I was going through lots of changes starting college. I missed my friends from high school and felt lost trying to find myself in a new community. This song is about the feeling of knowing you have yourself at the end of the day, but you can still get lonely. It’s the constant battle of combatting the freeing feeling of solitude yet loneliness in not having a community or just a friend.
CREDITS
Written by: Yna Pineda and Saint Lewis
Produced by: Yna Pineda and Saint Lewis
Vocal Performed and Arranged by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Production: Yna Pineda
Guitar: Yna Pineda and Josh Oliveros
Mixing: Michael Leto
Mastering: Liam Manansala Reyes
i wish u knew i existed
“i wish u knew i existed” depicts what it’s like to yearn for someone through the eyes of a queer lover, which was the first song I wrote that expressed my frustrations of accepting my queer identity. Coming out at the age of 16, I have been met with many moments that triggered a lot of internalized homophobia, shame, and guilt, especially as someone who grew up in a religious and Asian upbringing. Despite feeling the freedom of accepting myself for who I am and sharing it to the world, I still find myself scared. That’s the thing about queer love, you’re not only scared of rejection, but humiliation and even fear of your own safety. This song exemplifies the clash of love and heartbreak, along with pride and shame, which is expressed through a heavy production. This is probably the song I’m most proudest of in terms of my production, with the addition of Romello’s insane drums and Josh’s guitar solo. With many layers and an amalgamation of emotions, I feel it encompasses many themes and emotions that are present throughout the album for you to explore—and maybe to even find your own story intertwined in mine.
CREDITS
Written by: Yna Pineda
Produced by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Performed and Arranged by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Production: Yna Pineda
Guitar: Yna Pineda and Josh Oliveros
Drums: Romello
Mixing: Michael Leto
Mastering: Liam Manansala Reyes
yet
“yet” is one of the stripped down songs on the album, accompanied by two of my talented friends—Josh Oliveros on piano and Jonathan Hodges on violin. The simplicity of the song’s arrangement is to make way for the raw and heavy weight that the lyrics hold. I wrote this about 5 years ago during a time where I was healing after my first heartbreak, figuring out who I was, and trying to survive from the many doubts that flooded my head. I felt really lost because I kept wishing I was a better healed version of myself, but I knew I wasn’t there yet. The clash between such a peaceful arrangement by the piano and violin with lyrics that encompass my anxieties and fears, perfectly exemplifies the war inside of me that made me feel like I couldn’t hold the stars. The ending resolutes in the hope that maybe someday I will make it to wherever it is I want to be, but for now, I’m just not there yet.
CREDITS
Written by: Yna Pineda
Produced by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Performed and Arranged by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Production: Yna Pineda
Written by: Yna Pineda
Produced by: Yna Pineda and Saint Lewis
Vocal Performed and Arranged by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Production: Yna Pineda
Keys: Josh Oliveros
Violin: Jonathan Hodges
Mixing: Michael Leto
Mastering: Liam Manansala Reyes
dear pillow thoughts
“dear pillow thoughts” is written in a way as if I’m talking directly to my pillow thoughts, which is what I call the voices inside my head that find me at my lowest moments, especially the silent nights in my bed. It’s a song that reaches out to my demons because they are the ones that I find comfort in—despite them also being the bane of my existence. It also encompasses the familiarity I have found in my self-deprecating and doubtful thoughts because it’s what I grew up with and have believed most of my life. Towards the end, I find myself trying to break free from these thoughts by expressing my wishes to be heard and understood, only to be met with a defeated resolution of succumbing to my demons. This song wouldn’t be the way it is without the lovely production that Saint Lewis and Cheska Navarro did, especially since I had a lot of trouble envisioning the arrangement I wanted for this song, to which they both freely created this beautiful story.
CREDITS
Written by: Yna Pineda
Produced by: Yna Pineda, Saint Lewis, and Cheska Navarro
Vocal Performed and Arranged by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Production: Yna Pineda
Guitar: Yna Pineda
Drums/Synths/FX: Saint Lewis
Orchestration: Cheska Navarro
Mixing: Michael Leto
Mastering: Liam Manansala Reyes
paradox
“paradox” encompasses the idea of being just that, a paradox, which is something I believe I am. I always had a conflicting nature and it sometimes made me feel like I was hard to love. The song entails lyrics that contradict each other, coupled with vocals that are panned left and right to represent that split. It's raw and stripped down compared to my other released singles because I wanted it to feel heavy in its lyrics and the story rather than in the production. To the other paradoxes in the world, I hope this speaks to you and makes you feel less alone.
CREDITS
Written by: Yna Pineda
Produced by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Performed and Arranged by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Production: Yna Pineda
Mixing: Michael Leto
Mastering: Liam Manansala Reyes
emma
“emma” is inspired by this love I had for a girl, who is ironically not named “Emma”. This song is a place of yearning for and running from love, a self-sabotaging armor that I personally have worn my whole life. When it came to love, I was someone who was constantly immersed in the “what if’s” and “what could’ve been’s”—creating scenes and writing scripts in my head of an elaborate and grand love that I would live vicariously through the screen or words of other writers. However, despite being a hopeless romantic who yearned for such a thing, I was also a master of running away from it thinking that “if I broke my heart first, no one could hurt me.” It never made sense to me—it still doesn’t—but stemming from wounds of abandonment and heartbreak, it made sense that my perception of love was tainted as I tried to keep it in boxes that only I could open and close, an illusion of control if you will.
So when I fell for this girl, I found myself drowning in all these conflicting feelings, especially because I knew the ideal person she wanted to be with was a man. And as a queer person, that fear of not only rejection, shame, humility, and the cost of losing a friend, is a fear that bears so much weight compared to heteronormative love. So despite a very grand and orchestral production to exemplify the exciting feeling of falling in love, the song also entails lyrics that motivate self-sabotage and heartbreak, begging Emma to give me a reason to fall out of love with her. This song wouldn’t be complete without my lovely band, Yna and The Seasons, who laid instruments for this arrangement—Romello on drums, Josh on guitar, and Judii on bass. Accompanied by a beautiful arrangement of strings by my talented friends, Anne and Cheska Navarro, all of them completed this story of intense yearning for love in a cinematic approach.
CREDITS
Written by: Yna Pineda
Produced by: Yna Pineda
Performed by: Yna, Judii Angelica, Josh Oliveros, & Romello
Vocal Performed and Arranged by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Production: Yna Pineda
Orchestration: Cheska and Anne Navarro
Drums: Romello
Guitar: Josh Oliveros
Bass: Judii Angelica
Mixing: Michael Leto
Mastering: Liam Manansala Reyes
kin
“kin” was by far one of the hardest songs for me to hear back after I finished producing, especially because it is about my tattered relationship with my father. We were never close and a lot of his own trauma was projected onto me and my sister, which affected most of my childhood leading into my adulthood. I wrote this song about 3 days before my 22nd birthday, which scared me because even being miles away from home and living in a new city still didn’t completely detach me from this unhealed trauma I had. This song also encompasses generational trauma–how my trauma that stemmed from my dad’s mistreatment, was also projected onto my younger sister. There are some easter eggs in the production I added, such as a voice memo of my sister saying “I love you ate” and an audio of my friends singing “Happy Birthday” on my 22nd. Accompanied by a beautiful piano and drum arrangement by Cheska Navarro and Taylor O’Neal, respectively, “kin” is a song for the other older siblings out there who bore the weight of being the eldest child. We tried our best.
CREDITS
Written by: Yna Pineda
Produced by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Performed and Arranged by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Production: Yna Pineda
Keys: Cheska Navarro
Drums: Taylor O’Neal
Mixing: Michael Leto
Mastering: Liam Manansala Reyes
somewhere in chicago
“somewhere in chicago” is a full circle story that follows my journey from admiring Chicago from afar and eventually living in the very city I yearned to be in. I visited Chicago for the first time in 2019 and instantly fell in love with it. I had plans to move there with one of my friends from California, who got accepted into one of the schools in the city. However, COVID happened that year and money was tight for me, so I stayed behind while he went. Through his time living there, I lived vicariously through his eyes and was so happy for him while also wishing I was there too. I then wrote this song about wishing I did live in the city that I had admired for a while. I then visited him in the summer of that year and I still felt my love for Chicago. When I went back home, he told me one of his friends had an open room. We joked about me just packing my bags and moving there, but something was telling me to.
My classes for my last year of college were online so I thought why not. I found a job to pay rent there, did my classes online, went to parties, met a lot of people, made more music, and felt more myself than I ever did in years. My first time performing this song live was at my first Sofar show in 2022 and I felt emotional knowing everything came full circle--the fact that I was singing a song about the city I now live in and wished I did years ago. Some easter eggs in this song—in the break, you hear this audio of me from my first venue show at Schubas in 2023 where I’m talking to the crowd about this very song and then towards the end, I had a bunch of my friends layer their voices to sing the chorus with me. It felt right to leave this song towards the end, a somewhat ode to the 21 year old Yna who felt her life was meant to be with the city lights.
CREDITS
Drums: Romello
Mixing: Michael Leto
Mastering: Liam Manansala Reyes
suicidal stars
“suicidal stars” is an ode to 19 year-old Yna. Living in their parents house with big feelings that found home inside four walls where she felt like she couldn’t be truly heard or seen. I wrote this a few years back for an older album idea, but for those who may or may not notice, this song is an amalgamation of some of my earlier songs put into one: “if i was an artist”, “garden of roses”, “south loop” and “someday”. While I wrote a lot of my music in hopes of being understood and heard by other people, I feel like this one in particular is really for Yna—to remind them how far we’ve come and that all the battles were not for nothing. I decided this was the perfect ending to my debut album because it truly feels like an ode to that version of me who had this big grand idea of an album with songs that she knew were meant to be heard, to which I can now finally say that I finished it. This is for us, Yna—thank you for never giving up on our dream.
CREDITS
Written by: Yna Pineda
Produced by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Performed and Arranged by: Yna Pineda
Vocal Production: Yna Pineda
Drums: Romello
Mixing: Michael Leto
Mastering: Liam Manansala Reyes