Cup of Joe is top act of 2025

2026 will be a very busy year for Cup of Joe. The band is once more bringing the full ‘Stardust’ experience abroad with concert dates in Qatar and Singapore, as well as another US and Canada tour. There will be a tour of Philippine cities starting with Baguio, where it all began on Feb. 6. Aside from all those gigs, Rapha plus co-lead vocalist Gian Bernardino, guitarists Gab Fernandez and CJ Fernandez, and keyboard player Xen Gareza will also have to face up to the most daunting but also most exciting task of their career. That is, coming up with the follow-up album to ‘Silakbo’ and songs to rival the success of Multo.

The year 2025 will forever be remembered in the annals of Philippine pop music as the year of Cup of Joe. Aside from accomplishing several other milestones, the band from the Viva Music label became the first local act ever to enter the global hit charts with the song Multo last April.

You know those tabulations, most notably those by Billboard, Spotify, Apple, YouTube and others. They tell us what songs the world is listening to, the numbers of streams and downloads and which ones are making the big money.

And in 2025, those lists, mostly made up of recordings from the US of A, the UK, and South Korea and other countries, included a Filipino track for the first time ever. It was Multo by Cup of Joe from the album “Silakbo.”

It was last April, when Multo came in at No. 80 in Billboard Global and at No. 182 in Spotify Global and stayed in the lists for several weeks. The song is still No. 1 in Billboard Philippines’ Hot 100 after 40 weeks and in the Apple local hit list. It has dropped to No. 2 on Spotify after 351 days. The album “Silakbo” has been streamed 600 million times on Spotify as of this writing.

Then, I do not know if you noticed this. The Philippines is the only country where not one song from “KPop Demon Hunters” or from Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” album made number one. That was because Multo just refused to budge from the top.

Don’t you just feel proud! This reminds me of how Anak by the late Freddie Aguilar became a huge hit in Europe and Asia in 1979 save that thanks to the new technology, streaming and all, Multo has attained a wider reach.

Be prouder still that Cup of Joe did it with Multo, an original song in poetic Tagalog with Filipino sentiments written by Cup of Joe vocalist Raphaell Ridao with his brother Redentor Immanuel. The boys from Baguio are proof that there is no need to be a K-pop clone to be successful in the music business today.

Because of Multo, the doors are now open. The world has taken notice of a Filipino act and there will surely be others following in the footsteps of Cup of Joe soon.

Aside from the global milestone, Cup of Joe also figured in five sold-out concerts in 2025 at the Araneta Coliseum — “Silakbo” on Feb. 8 and 9 and “Stardust” on Oct. 10, 11 and 12. There was also a successful tour of US and Canadian cities plus Dubai and other local performances.

Cup of Joe is once more bringing the full “Stardust” experience abroad with concert dates in Qatar on Feb. 14; and Singapore on March 8. Another US and Canada tour is also in the offing.

There will be a tour of Philippine cities starting with Baguio, where it all began on Feb. 6; then Cebu on March 28; Iloilo on May 2; Davao on May 30; and Cagayan de Oro on June 13.

2026 will be a very busy year for the Cup of Joe. Aside from all those gigs, Rapha plus co-lead vocalist Gian Bernardino, guitarists Gab Fernandez and CJ Fernandez and keyboard player Xen Gareza will also have to face up to the biggest, most daunting but also most exciting task of their career.

That is coming up with the follow-up album to “Silakbo” and the songs that will rival the success of Multo. Feels scary. But no matter what happens, Cup of Joe has already accomplished what we once thought impossible. Everything else will just be added sparkle or more stardust.