Cagayan de Oro Christian contemporary band Thoughts And Notions just reached a major milestone after their song “Free” made it to Spotify’s latest Official Fresh Finds Philippines Playlist. “Free” ranked No. 7 among 100 tracks, much to the band’s surprise, as the song was originally written 15 years ago. The band will be releasing the official music video for “Free” on Thursday, October 10, via their YouTube channel.
LINK – https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1DXd41OiKoLJY1
Considered as the “LAST” Thoughts And Notions song from 2009 before they went on a long hiatus, “FREE” despite being an old recording from 15 years ago made its digital music debut at no. 7 on the playlist. This is the first time that fans of the band will be hearing this song as they weren’t able to release the song way back in 2009. Written and composed by guitarist John Erickson Gloria and drummer Adonis Berongoy (both currently playing for the CDO band OIC), the song didn’t make it to the band’s final cut for their sophomore album “Love, Faith, Hope, and Redemption”. The song had been vaulted for the last 15 years, only to be released today. The release was a huge breakthrough as being featured on Spotify’s Official Fresh Finds Philippines Playlist is something that can’t be easily achieved. The playlist (along with another bigger playlist called New Music Friday Philippines) serves as the official debut of newly released songs as determined by Spotify’s music editorial team, curating a playlist for their Filipino users. So it came as a complete surprise for the band that a 15-year old song still resonated with today’s audiences.
This also marked the band’s first release in two years that featured a song that has Thrina Dimaano on vocals, their original vocalist since 2006, albeit an old recording. The song also features Doris Bangot on bass as the four of them were the last iteration of the band before they went on a long hiatus. “FREE” is also not the first time that the band got featured on Spotify’s Editorial Playlists, as two previous songs released way back in 2022 also got featured on an editorial playlist. The songs “BELOVED SAVIOR” and “WHAT REAL CHRISTMAS MEANS TO ME” debuted on Spotify’s Official New Music Friday Philippines Playlist. Thoughts And Notions also just recently released their third album that features various artists from across the archipelago that collaborated with them and their new songs while Thrina is on hiatus. To date, they have already breached more than one million streams across their full song catalogue on Spotify. As per their official blogsite and on their official Facebook page, the release of “FREE” marks the end for this iteration of the band. This serves as the closing chapter of an era that spanned Thoughts And Notions’ foray in the CDO music scene of which they were actively performing live gigs be it small and large scale concerts from 2006-2009. They collected various accolades along the way, with the most significant one being nominated in the 2009 NU 107.5 Rock Awards under the URock College band of the year category. All three albums that they have released are all currently available at your favorite Digital Music Streaming platforms worldwide.
Watch the music video of FREE below (to premier on October 10).
