Soapdish: The OPM Band Whose Song Waited 20 Years to Go Viral

Some songs don't fade. They wait.

In the middle of 2025, a rock ballad called "Tensionado" started turning up everywhere: in TikTok clips, in guitar and ukulele tutorials, in karaoke videos, and eventually on Billboard Philippines' charts. A lot of the people singing along weren't around when it first came out.

Twenty years earlier, it had opened the self-titled debut album of a Quezon City band called Soapdish, and now that band was being searched for all over again.

If you're one of the people who typed "Soapdish band" into a search bar (and not the 1991 Sally Field comedy of the same name), this is the story you were looking for. It begins on a handful of afternoons in the summer of 2001 and runs all the way to the song's unlikely second life.

Fairview, Summer 2001

The story starts with friends who had nothing better to do and a lot of music to play. In the summer of 2001, a group in Fairview, Quezon City, began meeting every afternoon just to jam.

Within a couple of weeks they were playing at schools and other venues around the area, and they noticed something: people were listening. The covers started to feel small. They wanted songs of their own, ones people could see themselves in.

As with many young bands, the early lineup wasn't settled. One band history recalls a first group of Kurt, Louie, BJ and Terence, followed by departures for school and other priorities, and a reshuffle before the band found its footing.

Jeff Bolivar, Cesar Bendoy, Terence Teves and Kurt Floresca are usually named as the founders. Accounts of the early years differ a little, but they agree on the spirit of it: a neighborhood band that decided to get serious.

The People Behind the Songs

Through every version of Soapdish, one person stays at the front: Jeff Bolivar. Around him, the band you hear today is a four-piece:

• Jeff Bolivar: lead vocals and guitar

• Pei Signey: guitar (credited as "Pey" in some older press)

• Melvin Feliciano: bass

• Jeffrey Castro: drums

The rhythm section is where the story has changed most. The lineup behind the debut album looked like this:

• Cesar Bendoy: bass and backing vocals

• Kurt Floresca: drums

Older band bios also mention Oliver Estacion behind the kit at some point, and Floresca later filled in on drums for the indie band Peso Movement, a reminder of how much the Manila scene overlaps. By 2017, the quartet of Bolivar, Signey, Feliciano and Castro was in place.

2005: The Debut that Found its Audience

Soapdish signed with Viva Records and put out its self-titled debut album in 2005 (one older bio says early 2006, but most sources say 2005, so that's the date this story uses).

The album with "Tensionado." The rockier singles "Ewan Ko" and "Tensionado" got a warm reception at the time, but it was the third single, the ballad "Pwede Ba," that turned into the band's first truly big hit.

The album had plenty more behind those singles. Other originals on the record include:

• "Sandali"

• "Sana Sinabi"

• "Would You"

• "Pain Redeemed"

• "Nana Song"

By mid-2006, Soapdish was already being called a hot newcomer.

Then came a smart second act. The album was re-released as Soapdish Reloaded with a new bonus track, "Nandito Lang Ako," composed by Bolivar. It became the theme of Posh, a series co-produced by Viva TV and GMA 7 that aired on QTV 11, which put the band's soulful side in front of a television audience.

A Sound Built on Big Guitars and Gigger Feelings

Soapdish sits somewhere between pop rock, alternative rock and OPM, but the way people describe the band says more. Early on, their expressive, soulful rock ballads stood out. "Tensionado" itself is an emotive rock ballad about trying to revive a fading love.

The original is headbang-worthy and heavy on the instruments, with lyrics that speak to emotional conflict over unresolved feelings. Put together, that's the Soapdish signature: loud guitars carrying a very human ache.

"Pwede Ba?" showed the softer side and was the song that gave the band its first truly big hit. "Nandito Lang Ako" leaned the same way.

Together with "Tensionado" and "Ewan Ko," they're the songs people still reach for when they talk about the band, and "Tensionado" and "Pwede Ba?" remain the two they're best known for.

If you're new to the band, these are the songs to start with:

• "Tensionado" (2005): the opening track of the debut and the band's biggest hit

• "Pwede Ba?" (2005): the ballad that gave Soapdish its first big hit

• "Ewan Ko" (2005): one of the early rocking singles

• "Nandito Lang Ako" (2006): the bonus track that became a TV theme

• "Kung Puwede Lang" (2017): an atmospheric, cool-toned single

• "Pinapaasa" (2022): a newer single

Songs Analysis: The Band that Sang About Staying

Most love songs live in one of three places: the chase, the feelings you never confessed, or the heartbreak after it's over. A lot of the "hugot" songs Filipinos know by heart sit in exactly those spots. 

Soapdish chose a less crowded corner. Their best-known songs, "Tensionado" and "Pwede Ba?", aren't about winning someone or losing them. They're about a relationship that already exists, is hurting, and is worth fixing.

"Tensionado": pause the fight, save the relationship

The title means tense, and the song lives inside that strain. It opens with a surprise: the narrator realizes he isn't the only one who regrets the argument, the one that ended in tears and sulking. Then comes the plea. 

Wait, don't say anything yet, he won't let all of this slip away, and the question he keeps circling back to is whether the two of them still have a chance.

The second verse names the real problem: the same miserable cycle, round and round like a bottle spinning, and he wonders whether his partner has gotten so used to it that his questions were forgotten. 

The next chorus asks for something simple and fair: if things aren't clear, can we stop shouting? By the final chorus, he's asking why he'd let the other person go too.

What stands out is who isn't in this song. There's no villain and no one-sided blame. The narrator owns his regret and, in the same breath, asks for calm and clarity so the two of them can actually talk.

"Pwede Ba?": The Question That Urges Us to Rethink our Love

"Pwede Ba?" carries the same instinct. Even the title is a question, the soft, hopeful kind of ask you make when you'd rather keep something than win an argument. 

Like "Tensionado," it's the voice of someone trying to hold a relationship together instead of starting one or mourning one. It's also the ballad that gave Soapdish its first truly big hit.

The Martir in All of Us

In Filipino slang, a martir is the person who absorbs the hurt for love: the one who apologizes first, keeps asking, and keeps trying even when it doesn't feel fair. That's a very recognizable figure during senti moments, the late-night, replaying-the-conversation kind. 

The narrator of "Tensionado" can easily be read this way, as the one holding on and taking the first step. That's an interpretation, not something the band has stated.

But he isn't a pure martyr. He doesn't just swallow the pain. He asks for the shouting to stop and for things to be made clear, which is the part that makes the song feel generous and healthy, not self-erasing.

Why this Makes Soapdish Easy to Love

• For Pinoy band fans: big guitars and big feelings, with choruses built around a question anyone can sing along to.

• For anyone who's been in a long relationship: it's about misunderstandings, fights and the tired loops that follow, which is a lot more common than a first crush.

• For music lovers in general: it's a grown-up take on love, focused on the work that comes after the butterflies. That's likely part of why listeners who weren't around in 2005 connected with "Tensionado" so quickly in 2025.

In a genre full of songs about wanting someone or missing them, Soapdish wrote about staying and trying, and that's why the songs still land.

The Quieter Years, and a Few New Chapters

After the debut, the story gets harder to follow, and it's worth being honest about that. A 2009 album, Goodluck... Goodbye, appears in the band's discography, but we couldn't find independent coverage of it, so there isn't much to tell.

What the record does show is a band that kept coming back. In February 2017, Soapdish released "Kung Puwede Lang" on Spotify, Apple Music and iTunes.

The quartet was called vastly underrated and capable of evolving its sound as the industry demanded, and the new single came across as atmospheric and cool-toned, a low-key sensual track that arrived almost three years after the band's last release. In 2022 came "Pinapaasa," the band's first new material in three years.

None of it was a blockbuster comeback. It was the sound of a band that simply kept playing.

 

2025: "Tensionado" Gets a Second Life

Then the internet did what the radio once did. By mid-2025, "Tensionado" was going viral on TikTok and YouTube, and the early-2000s single, as one music column put it, still sounded current by 2025 standards.

Guitar chord tutorials, ukulele lessons, piano walkthroughs and karaoke-style clips piled up, and a new generation found the song on its own.

The charts followed, and the numbers tell the story:

• Top Philippine Songs: "Tensionado" debuted at No. 21 for the week of August 2, 2025

• Philippines Hot 100: it climbed from No. 58 to No. 41 the same week

Some online summaries put No. 21 on the Hot 100, but the official chart report places it on Top Philippine Songs, so that's what this story follows. The same report called "Tensionado" the band's biggest hit, rediscovered by a new audience on TikTok.

Other artists joined in. Cuatro, four Maraguinot brothers signed to Viva Music Group's Ivory Music label, released a cover that was more laid-back and sentimental than the instrumental-heavy original, arranged by their youngest member, Ethan.

Why the Soapdish Story Still Matters

Look at the whole arc and it's a quietly hopeful one. A few friends in Fairview jammed their way into a record deal. They wrote a ballad that a TV series borrowed, kept releasing music long after the spotlight moved on, and then watched a song they made in 2005 climb the charts two decades later.

 

The lineup shifted and the years got quieter, but the songs were still there when a new audience went looking.

Soapdish isn't a band that needs a rewrite of its history to be worth your time. It needs a listen. Start with "Tensionado," follow it to "Pwede Ba?", then work back through the rest of the debut album.

Some songs don't fade. They wait, and this one finally got its turn.