Proving Them Wrong <3

“Hold up, hold up,” says the artist mid-song as the band slowly stops playing. “I see a lot of people in this room not f***ing moving like I asked you to. So real quick, we’re all gonna crouch down, okay?,” the artist’s second request is heard and the band and the crowd slowly begin to crouch down. A low murmuring runs throughout the crowd as the lights go down.

“And on the count of three, are you ready to f***ing jump? One, two, ONE, TWO, THREE, JUMP!” With his exuberant cry, the lights flare and everyone in the venue begins jumping. The guitarist and bassist gleefully hop around in time with the song. All 1,000 fans jump in time, as the artist sings the chorus of “prove me wrong.” United as one, they all scream the peak of the chorus together, “I hope you prove me wrong, hope ya prove me wrong,” as MICO breaks into a massive, open-mouthed smile, embodying the joy of the moment.

Debuting on June 27, 2019, Filipino Canadian singer-songwriter MICO began on a path that not even he could see the end of. Slowly building his fanbase through SoundCloud, Discord, and TikTok, MICO has amassed 484,050 monthly listeners on Spotify and 607,285+ followers collectively across his Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Some of his most streamed hits are “cut my hair,” “lie lie lie,” and “down!,” all of which helped cement his unique music style in a blend of 2000s nostalgia, modern pop, and punk rock.

MICO played his first live show on Nov. 20, 2022 his hometown Toronto, Canada, and has since embarked on his first headliner tour across North America. He sold out three stops on the first half of the tour and would later sell out the entirety of his U.S. east coast stretch in the second half of the

tour. And he’s achieved all of this before his 21st birthday! With his sights set on a radio takeover, there's no telling where the limit is for MICO.

Q: How did you get into pop punk?

A: I’ve always been very pop-focused as a kid; I’d listen to the pop rock bands my dad

loved from the 80s, but then I stumbled across 5 Seconds of Summer and while they’re very pop-focused, it’s kind of a gateway into that style and I just kept listening deeper and deeper.

Q: What about the early 2000s and 2010s punk pop scene made you think “This, this is the style of music I want to create?”

A: It just had so much energy yet so much heart in it; you could say things so unapologetically and so melodramatic without it feeling out of place. I kind of like to juxtapose it with the very blunt lyricism we’ve all gotten used to in more modern music, but having that freedom

is very nice.

Q: Why did you decide to pursue music?

A: I never really decided to, it was just what I gravitated towards the most as a kid. I really didn’t have any other ambitions, and when I started releasing in 2019, things just started going on SoundCloud and Spotify, so it just made sense to keep going. I didn’t really have any other options at that point.

Q: Did graduating from high school and your career building steam during COVID-19 affect how you make music or what you’ve created?

A: Absolutely. I’ve always been social media driven, but then to have an audience that’s used to in-person experiences suddenly at my fingertips because they didn’t have anywhere in-person to go, is a very powerful tool. It’s a moment that I knew I wanted to capitalize on, and I wanted to make people feel like they were a part of something again like how concerts and meet and greets and street teams would make you feel, just online.

Q: In your opinion, how has TikTok helped influence your career as an artist?

A: It’s really funny because all of the songs from the “second thoughts” EP and “half of the tears we fight” EP were already written by the time I’d had a moment on TikTok. It didn’t influence my music very much but it had a very strong impact on how I viewed pushing myself. TikTok itself is just a very personal app; even with reels and shorts, you see more of a commercialized/professional vibe than with people on TikTok just going on their phones and pressing record. I just wanted to showcase how much I cared about what I was writing, how passionate I was about listening and being a fan of other artists, and have people resonate with that.

Q: Can you tell me about how Discord helped build your career?

A: Discord was one of the first tools I utilized when I was starting the mico project. I don’t know how much you know about the discord scene, but basically everyone from the SoundCloud indie-pop and hyperpop scenes were using it because we were all chronically online and played games more than we made music. It became a really useful tool for meeting people, and eventually, people I knew started to help platform me with their audiences online and I could use Discord as a general chat for all of my fans to interact in one place and feel more connected than Instagram comments ever could.

Q: Headlining your first North American tour and selling out multiple stops along the way, did you ever think you’d be able to achieve all this before you were 21?

A: No, definitely not. Especially growing on TikTok, it was always a fear of mine that tickets just wouldn’t move. Especially with all of the building really only happening in the last year, it’s kind of wild to me.

Q: Has there been a moment when you realized “I’m doing it, I’m making it?”

A: The first show in November of 2022 was the first time I could visually see people resonating and actually put faces to a lot of comments I’d receive. Numbers are just numbers, but real people are real and that’s what really made me feel it.

Q: What’s next on your musical journey? What are your goals?

A: I have zero ideas. After this year, it’ll actually be the first time in three years I have absolutely nothing in the vault. It’s a bit scary, but it’s exciting to be able to start from scratch again.

Q: Best moment(s) from your tour?

A: Meeting everyone and hearing everyone’s stories has been amazing. I make it a goal of mine to meet as many people as possible; I haven’t been doing paid meet and greets this tour, just meeting as many people from doors opening until the venue kicks us out. It’s really awesome seeing everyone and hearing everyone’s stories.

Q: Worst moment(s) from your tour?

A: You’d think it’d be getting robbed1, but it was actually everything after until we got back to Canada. We’d have to spend every free day trying to figure out how to replace the stolen passports and how to deal with the gear being gone until we could be back in a more familiar place.

Q: Funnest moment(s) from your tour?

A: Honestly just the van2. The van is 90% of the trip, so we kind of have to make it interesting and those conversations don’t ever disappoint.

Q: What are you looking forward to the most for the second half of the tour?

A: I’m just really excited to play the hometown shows again. We did an Ontario run earlier this year and it was wild to me how many people so close by in neighbouring cities were resonating with the music, and I can’t wait to feel that sense of local community again.

Q: What is your favorite song you’ve made?

A: “another soul” just holds a really special place in my heart. “the tears we fight” was originally supposed to be a sister project to “second thoughts,” but then after writing what would be the first three singles and some others, I just wasn’t really happy with the direction and “another soul” really helped solidify what it is that I wanted to make.

Q: If you could only show people three of your songs, what would they be?

A: “another soul”, “cut my hair”, and “prove me wrong” all fit that bill.

Q: What made you want to let other creators use your music?

A: Before I was making music, I was creating gaming content. Especially in recent years, I’ve seen a lot of my friends struggle with finding good music to be able to play in their videos, and seeing how beneficial it is to both content creators and musicians looking to be platformed, it just makes too much sense to do instead of making a couple of cents off of claiming things.

Q: Do you think being a Filipino Canadian artist has shaped the way you create music?

A: Absolutely. The only reason I’ve been so performance-focused over studio-focused is because of how I was raised and how important being a showman is culturally.

Q: What made you decide to incorporate fighting for more Asian/Filipino representation in the music industry into your career?

A: I’ve just seen the story too many times where Filipinos would be locked into the Filipino industry (which the contracts are mostly terrible), or how half-Filipinos would make it solely because they showcase the other half of them and let the Filipino part just be the singing part. While it’s a large part, it’s a lot more than that, and I just want to showcase that Filipinos can be excellent songwriters, amazing public personalities, and that we hold the door open for each other.

Q: Why did you decide now is the time to try and break into the radio sphere?

A: It just feels like it’s been a huge barrier and what really quantifies making it, not to me but to a lot of outsiders. I’m content with where I am and where it’s going, but I’m still mostly shut out of a lot of places in the industry. And I’m just constantly on a vendetta to prove them wrong and to prove that I have a place here.

Q: If people had to take one message away from you and your music, what would it be?

A: Don’t give up. Whether it’s in personal strides or public persona, everything I write and do, even if it’s mostly sad, is always after the fact. There’s always recovery, there’s always ways to make the bad look beautiful, and there’s always more than what’s directly in front of you.

Q: Question submitted by Jared Luzod, a UCF Filipino musician: “I would ask him if he would like to perform at UCF one day haha. But I would ask where he mostly gets his inspiration from, like artists, genres, I feel like we have similar music tastes after seeing his TikToks where he would reference artists like “The Band CAMINO”, “The 1975”, etc.”

A: I mostly listen to any genres that have “pop” in the word! pop rock, pop punk, alternative pop, pop rap... I’m literally just a sucker for all styles of music mixed with pop songwriting styles. It’s amazing to me how so many artists can make so many different styles of music and still have that recognizable feeling, and that’s what I’m inspired by.

Q: How do you get your inspiration for your music video concepts?

A: I usually just sit down with Adit3 and brainstorm all ideas possible for whatever song it is. It’s very much driven by narrative rather than looks or aesthetics; the aesthetic is often a second thought for me over conveying the message at hand.

Q: Being two of your most streamed songs on YouTube, what do you think sets “cut my hair” and “lie lie lie” apart from your other songs?

A: I think they just encapsulate that youthful feeling with forward thought processes. I’ve always been the kid that’s more emotionally mature than the others (or so I’ve been told), and those songs kind of encapsulate that feeling perfectly; of feeling young yet feeling a bit more than those around you.

Q: I noticed a handful of your songs like “peaked” and “down!” include lyrics about the struggles of adulthood and uncertainty in the future, what motivated you to want to write lyrics about this topic?

A: Nothing is ever guaranteed to you, especially in the arts. Even if you work hard, it’s really a stroke of luck whether or not you get a chance. And especially being an age where every step matters for your future, that uncertainty really drove those ones in the writing.

MICO and his band successfully closed “The Fantasy Tour” in his hometown Toronto on Dec. 7, just a day after his 21st birthday. As a special surprise, MICO hosted a 19-year-old plus “Fantasy Tour Afterparty” following the end of the concert. Throughout the tour he had been performing three unreleased songs: “better,” “treat your friends,” and “twenty-something.” As a reverse birthday gift to his fans the Amicos, he released these songs on an EP appropriately called “the afterparty” at midnight on his birthday. “I never really liked celebrating my birthday; so this year, I gave myself a reason to,” MICO wrote on “the afterparty” announcement post.

Striving to be an amazing singer-songwriter and performer, the world is MICO’s oyster. Limited by only his ambitions, MICO can prove to the world that Filipinos are equally as great musicians. He could be the person to hold the door open for other underrepresented artists, like others have before him.

Historically, Filipinos have helped shape and change the music industry in many ways, for example “Filipinos Represent: DJs, Racial Authenticity, and the Hip-hop Nation” reads that Filipino DJs of the late 1980s and early 1990s, in the turntable era, “were at the forefront of the turntablist movement, leading the way in pushing the sonic boundaries of DJing and advancing the notion of turntables as musical instruments.” More recently, mixed Filipino artists like Bruno Mars, Olivia Rodrigo, Apl.de.ap

of the Black Eyed Peas and H.E.R. have made homes for themselves in the earbuds of fans worldwide.

While there are some big names in music who represent minority communities, there is still a large gap between the various ethnic communities. According to “Race- and gender-based under-

representation of creative contributors: art, fashion, film, and music,” out of a sample of 220 musicians, they found that 1.9% of the participants identified as Asian. Out of 220 musicians, only four identified as Asian.

“I do wish there was more Filipino representation in the music industry. Even though we have heavy hitters like Olivia Rodrigo and Bruno Mars, I do wish some smaller artists like MICO and Lyn Lapid would be more known,” Luzdo said. “I would be happy to support such Filipino artists.”

For there to be more representation in mainstream music, or even different genres, smaller artists like MICO need to be offered the same opportunities as those with record label, brand, or investor backing. As an independent artist, getting your song played on the radio is an extremely difficult task. Being an independent artist makes getting your songs heard by many an uphill battle.

“I want to prove that against all odds, someone starting with zero connections is able to do what others thought to be impossible,” MICO wrote on his amicos.hq Instagram page back in Oct. 2023 when he announced his next venture, making it on the radio.

“We’re gonna be starting out with small operations (listening parties, street team, posters/flyers, etc), with a huge central goal; a full-blown radio campaign solely driven by fans.

It’s a huge ask, maybe even an impossible ask... but I’d rather die trying than let other kids like me give up because they think they need a s***ty deal that they don’t. We’re already proving a ton of people wrong; nobody expected a 20-year-old Asian Canadian to sell out shows across the continent fully independently in the rock space. Let’s prove them wrong again <3”

1MICO and his band’s travel van got broken into in California. The thief stole valuables such as passports, electronics, and jewelry.

2MICO and his band drove to every tour stop in a van.

3Adit is MICO’s music video director.