What is O.P.M.? OPM means Original Philippine Music or Original Pilipino Music.
From what I understand about OPM, OPM are songs or music that are originally written and composed by Filipinos.
OPM music is very diverse. It does not concentrate only on one genre. It encompasses all types of music. But the most popular types of music are pop, ballad or more known as "love songs", rock and hip-hop.
Since the Philippines is a bilingual country - it has two official languages: Filipino (the national language) based on Tagalog; and English - OPM songs are either written in Tagalog or in English.
One cannot pinpoint which type of music that clearly identifies Philippines' musical preference. Every era has its own type of music, for example, during the late 60's and the 70's, love songs dominated the Philippines' airwaves. But rock music also known as Pinoy rock was also the music of choice by the younger generations during the late 70's. It was also during the 70's that Filipino songwriters started to write English songs.
Disco songs or dance-pop music flourished during the 80's. It was also during the early 80's that hip-hop music started to take root in the Philippines, in fact, the Philippines is the first Asian country to have hip-hop music. But it was only during the 1990's that hip-hop music rose to prominence. Along with the rise of hip-hop music was also the return of rock music which was so popular among college students who formed different rock bands.
At the start of 2000, OPM music has gradually changed. Pop music started to emerge again and new music genres are being appreciated by the Filipinos such as R&B, reggae and lately bossa nova. There is also a type of music that has a huge following among OPM music lovers, and that is the acoustic versions of current and past popular songs.
As of the present, even though it was rumored that OPM has died, OPM is still as strong as ever. It still managed to be on the top three or even at the number one spot in the Philippines' music charts in spite of the popularity of Kpop music and the usual American and European music. One thing is for sure, OPM will never die, it will always emerge and re-emerge as time goes by.
