San Francisco’s cultural soundscape has been enlivened by Michellar, heralding her new single, “Aunque por sea una noche (If It’s Only for One Night),” Together with singer Jiji Picazo and producer Lloyd Miller, Michellar comes through with a deeply sincere song that feels both personal and transcendent, tying in her Spanish and Filipino roots with a timeless narrative of love that sticks around long after it’s faded.
The song feels like a hug, one that encapsulates the warmth of a temporary connection and the power it leaves behind. Michellar calls the inspiration that rare instance, that one time someone makes you feel so loved, you feel like you could live and survive forever. The emotional honesty of that sentiment glows throughout the single, which is propelled by soulful melodies and sweet harmonies that brim with her Latin heritage. Jiji’s voice floats over Michellar’s vision, entwining in a manner that is at once retro and for the future. There is something old and new in the delivery, a timelessness that pays homage to the past, but insinuates another future. Producer Lloyd Miller keeps his arrangements spare but stirring as he anchors the song in the band’s understated guitar and drums and lets the emotion take the lead while sparsing out a soundscape that seems at once private and vast.
Recorded out of San Francisco’s Women’s Audio Mission studio, “Aunque por sea una noche (If It’s Only for One Night” is Michellar’s first Spanish-language release and a testament to her artistic bravery and cultural discovery. The process was highly collaborative, Michellar and Jiji collaboratively shaped the Spanish translation of the English words into a version that feels authentic and poetic. The result is a track that doesn’t so much tell a story as live in one, pulling listeners into a space of collective honesty, beauty, and memory.