Story of Us (Philippines’ Version)

In her commencement speech addressing New York University’s (NYU) class of 2022, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift said she was, “Not the type of doctor you would want around in the case of an emergency, unless your specific emergency was that you desperately needed to hear a song with a catchy hook and an intensely cathartic bridge section. Or if your emergency was that you needed a person who can name over 50 breeds of cats in one minute.”

What if your emergency was that you needed a song to perfectly encapsulate your feelings after a national event? Fear not, Taylor Swift has a song for every situation, occasion, season, emotion, and apparently even for an election.

As the campaigns came to an end and results for the 2022 Philippine national elections poured in, voters have been expressing their feelings of celebration or despair on social media through posts, tweets, and videos. One song that went viral through Tiktok was Taylor Swift’s “Only the Young,” which was playing over a montage of the election campaign period and the partial, unofficial election results. It peaked at #4 on the Philippines Spotify Daily Chart with 264,484 streams, increasing by 239%.

Many Kakampinks, the collective name for presidential candidate Vice President Leni Robredo supporters, found the song to be somewhat of an anthem for them. Robredo’s campaign, a volunteer-driven one with supporters spending their own money and time campaigning for the candidate, found the song lyrics to be parallels to recent times.

“The game was rigged, the ref got tricked,

The wrong ones think they're right,

You were outnumbered, this time.”

Numerous instances of electoral fraud claims have been made on social media, with the results said to be in favor of Robredo’s tightest competitor, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. Despite these allegations, which Commission on Elections (COMELEC) Commissioner Marlon Casquej said at a media briefing was “hard to prove,” Marcos Jr. has been proclaimed as president-elect on May 25.

“And the big bad man and his big bad clan,

Their hands are stained with red,

Oh, how quickly, they forget.”

A Twitter user called @alltoojohn who wrote a thread interpreting Only the Young’s lyrics said that this part was self-explanatory, alluding to the fact that the initial letters of “big bad man” are the same as those of Bongbong Marcos’ initials. They also tweeted that “Oh, how quickly, they forget,” refers to how the majority of Filipinos have seemingly forgotten about “how the Marcoses destroyed the Philippines for 21 years through taking away the rights of people by imposing martial law.”

“Only the young can run.”

Although Kakampinks came from different ages, genders, and backgrounds, they consisted mainly of the youth who were hoping to change the course of their future under a Robredo presidency and believed that, “The best man for the job is a woman.”

Only the Young is just one of Taylor Swift’s songs that the movement used, with the others being “Long Live,” “Change,” and even “The Man,” which was often cited due to the fact that Robredo was the sole female candidate for the presidency, while amidst the campaign and during her term as vice president, she has faced various forms of gender discrimination and attacks caused by disinformation.

“Because these things will change.

Can you feel it now?

These walls that they put up to hold us back will fall down.

It's a revolution, the time will come

For us to finally win

And we'll sing hallelujah, we'll sing hallelujah.”

Meanwhile, Change reflects the burning passion of Robredo's supporters. Although their candidate failed to win the presidential race, they are still ready to run with her through the Angat Buhay NGO, a newly announced non-governmental organization by Robredo, derived from her flagship program of the same name. Robredo also encouraged supporters to champion for the truth and not lose sight of what their campaign stands for: lifting the lives of the marginalized.

Lastly, the hopeful lyrics of Long Live have been quoted many times by Kakampinks, with the most famous one being a tweet of Kakie Pangilinan, daughter of Robredo’s running mate Senator Kiko Pangilinan, embedded with two photos of her and Jillian Robredo, the Vice President’s youngest daughter. Coincidentally, Jillian’s graduation was also the same one where Taylor Swift received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa from NYU.

“Long live all the mountains we moved,

I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you.”

Although Leni Robredo might have lost the fight for the presidential position, she and her supporters have certainly moved mountains, with people calling the “Pink Movement” a new phenomenon in Philippine politics and even likening it to the 1986 People Power Revolution which, coincidentally again, ousted Bongbong Marcos’ father, dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

Indeed, the 15,035,773 Kakampinks had the time of their lives fighting dragons with Robredo and writing their story on, as they say, “the right side of history.”