The Distance Between “DESERVE IT” and “TALK TO YOU”: Troy Javelona on Turning Change Into Sound

By. Alicia Zamora

Photo Credit: Harry Wilson

Before NO HEALING WITHOUT HEARTBREAK became a project about growth, healing, and learning how to move forward, music occupied a very different role in Troy Javelona's life.

Growing up in the UK, he was surrounded by music from an early age. Guitar became his first entry point, and like many young musicians, he spent hours teaching himself through YouTube videos, learning chords, studying covers, and gradually figuring out how to sing and play at the same time. Songwriting wasn't part of the equation yet. Neither was production. At that stage, the goal was much simpler.

"I wanted to project my voice and just show people that I can play and sing."

Looking back, there's something refreshingly straightforward about the way he describes it. He isn't rewriting those early years through the lens of who he is now. There was no grand artistic vision waiting to be discovered. Music was something he enjoyed, something he wanted to get better at, and something that challenged him in a way that kept him coming back.

That curiosity eventually followed him into a completely different chapter of life.

Before high school, Troy moved from the UK to the Philippines, a transition that brought new routines, new environments, and a culture that felt markedly different from the one he had grown up in. While music remained a constant, one of the experiences that left the biggest impression on him had nothing to do with songwriting at all.

As part of school, he participated in Citizenship Advancement Training, a mandatory program built around military-style discipline and structure.

"I think that training alone really taught me discipline."

The program demanded consistency, accountability, and routine. At the time, it may not have seemed connected to music, but looking back, Troy sees a direct line between those experiences and the way he approaches his work today.

"I brought those values in with everything that I do today, whether that's music or just life in general."

That sense of discipline would become especially important years later when the world unexpectedly slowed down.

Like many artists, Troy found himself spending more time at home during COVID. It was during that period that his relationship with music began to change. What had started with guitar and singing gradually expanded into production, opening up an entirely new creative world.

"I started with beats, like type beats."

From there, the process became one of experimentation. He spent time studying production, building instrumentals, and learning through trial and error. Early influences naturally found their way into the music. Artists like Steve Lacy and Malcolm Todd helped shape the sounds he was drawn to at the time, but rather than copying what he heard, Troy focused on understanding why those records connected with him in the first place.

Over time, those influences became stepping stones rather than destinations.

"I eventually ventured into my own sort of category where I started making my own stuff."

What stands out most in the way he talks about finding his sound is how patient the process was. In an era where artists often feel pressured to define themselves immediately, Troy never describes discovering his identity as a single breakthrough moment. Instead, it happened gradually through exploration.

That same mindset informs the advice he gives to younger artists who feel trapped by comparison or discouraged by not knowing exactly who they are yet.

"Just explore."

For Troy, finding your voice isn't about eliminating your influences. It's about learning how to carry them with you while still creating something that feels personal.

"If you allow yourself to find a path where you can create something—not necessarily something that sounds similar—but something inspired by it and shaped in your own way, I think that's a really underrated skill to have."

The answer feels particularly fitting when viewed alongside his own journey. The artist who started out learning covers on guitar eventually became someone producing his own records, writing his own songs, and building a sound that no longer relied on anyone else's blueprint.

That evolution, however, brought a different challenge: figuring out how to grow without losing the joy that made him want to create in the first place.

For a period of time, Troy had found a rhythm that worked. Every month, a new song. Consistent releases. Constant momentum. From the outside, it looked like the kind of discipline many artists spend years trying to build. But eventually, he started noticing something missing.

The songs were coming out, but they weren't necessarily connecting to one another.

"There wasn't enough depth."

It's a simple observation, but one that would ultimately shape the direction of NO HEALING WITHOUT HEARTBREAK. At the time, Troy wasn't struggling to make music. If anything, he was making plenty of it. The challenge was figuring out what all of it was leading toward.

"There wasn't a dedicated plan."

Like many independent artists navigating an industry that rewards consistency, releasing frequently had become part of the routine. The pressure to stay active, stay visible, and keep moving can be difficult to ignore. But over time, Troy found himself wanting something that allowed for a bigger picture.

Instead of immediately moving on to the next release, he made a decision that many artists find surprisingly difficult.

He stepped back.

"I allowed myself to take a step back and sort of look at the whole situation and collect songs."

What followed wasn't necessarily a master plan. It was more of a realization. The songs he had been writing weren't isolated moments anymore. Together, they were beginning to tell a larger story.

For the first time, he wasn't thinking about individual tracks.

He was thinking about a body of work.

That shift changed the way he approached the music itself. Rather than asking what the next release should be, he started asking how the songs spoke to one another. What connected them. What emotional thread ran through all of them.

Eventually, the answer became impossible to ignore.

The songs were documenting different stages of the same experience.

At the same time, Troy was learning something else about himself as an artist: creativity works differently when pressure enters the room.

"I didn't want to feel the pressure."

He says it almost immediately when reflecting on that period.

Not because he lacked ambition. If anything, his commitment to music had only grown stronger. But somewhere along the way, expectation had started competing with enjoyment.

"The pressure would stop me from making great music."

It's a feeling many artists know well. The moment creating starts feeling more like performance than exploration. When every idea is measured against what it could become before it's even given the chance to exist.

For Troy, independence has always been one of the most rewarding parts of making music. The ability to follow his instincts, experiment freely, and trust his own decisions remains central to his process. But maintaining that freedom requires protecting the reason he started creating in the first place.

The fun has to stay intact. Without it, the work becomes harder to recognize. That mindset extends beyond pressure and into another challenge nearly every artist encounters at some point: comparison.

For emerging musicians especially, it can be difficult to separate admiration from self-doubt. Social media creates a constant stream of people doing incredible work, often making success feel much closer and much further away at the same time.

Troy doesn't pretend he's immune to that experience. Instead, he's learned to approach it differently.

"Just explore." The answer arrives without hesitation.

Rather than viewing other artists as competition, he sees influence as part of the process. Something to study rather than fear.

"If you allow yourself to sort of find that pathway where you can create something that—not in a way sounds similar—but you can take inspiration from it and put it into your own way..."

For him, growth comes from curiosity.

The goal isn't to eliminate outside influences. It's to absorb them, learn from them, and eventually transform them into something personal.

"I feel like that skill is a very underrated skill to have."

Listening to him describe it, the philosophy feels remarkably similar to the journey that ultimately shaped NO HEALING WITHOUT HEARTBREAK. Nothing about the project feels forced into existence. It wasn't built around a concept first and then filled in afterward. It emerged gradually through experience, reflection, and allowing things to reveal themselves over time.

And nowhere is that more evident than in the songs themselves.

Because while the EP eventually became a story about healing, it begins somewhere much messier.

With a breakup.

And with a song written before enough time had passed to fully understand what any of it meant.

"DESERVE IT" was written the day after it happened.

"I was so broken that I wasn't going to let anything stop me from saying what I wanted to say."

The song doesn't sound like someone reflecting on an experience.

It sounds like someone still standing inside it.

And that's exactly what makes it such an important starting point for the project.

What makes NO HEALING WITHOUT HEARTBREAK compelling isn't simply that it documents a difficult period of Troy's life. It's that each song captures a different stage of how he experienced it.

If "DESERVE IT" serves as the emotional starting point, the songs that follow begin exploring everything that came after the initial shock—the questions, frustrations, and moments of self-reflection that don't always have clear answers.

For Troy, the breakup at the center of the project wasn't just significant because it ended a relationship. It was significant because it was his first heartbreak.

And with that came an entirely new emotional landscape.

"It was my first heartbreak," he says. "I've never felt those emotions before."

Looking back, that's the part he returns to most often. Not necessarily the relationship itself, but the experience of confronting emotions he hadn't previously had to navigate.

"When I went through that heartbreak, I learned so much about myself."

The learning wasn't immediate. If anything, the songs suggest the opposite. Many of them were written before he had the language to fully explain what he was feeling. The writing became part of the process of figuring it out.

"I learned what was okay, what I thought wasn't okay."

In that sense, the EP functions almost like a journal—one that documents emotional growth in real time rather than looking back on it with complete clarity.

That becomes especially apparent on "WHAT'S A GUY GOTTA DO."

Where "DESERVE IT" feels immediate and emotionally raw, "WHAT'S A GUY GOTTA DO" captures a different stage of the experience. The relationship had ended, but the overthinking hadn't.

"I was always in my head a lot."

It's a simple statement, but one that appears repeatedly throughout the conversation in different forms. Not because Troy defines himself that way, but because so much of this project emerged from periods of reflection, questioning, and trying to make sense of things after the fact.

For a while, those thoughts stayed internal. Then they entered the studio.

One of the most interesting things about hearing Troy talk about the EP is the way collaboration enters the story. While many of the emotions behind the project were deeply personal, not every song was created in isolation.

For "WHAT'S A GUY GOTTA DO," opening up to other people in the room became part of the writing process itself. "Opening up to them was such an eye-opening experience." The answer feels bigger than the song.

Until that point, many of those feelings had existed internally, circling around unanswered questions and private thoughts. Putting them into words in front of collaborators required a different kind of vulnerability. "It was nice to get a different perspective."

That perspective didn't erase what he was feeling, but it helped him process it differently. And that's one of the quieter themes running throughout the EP: healing doesn't happen entirely alone.

Sometimes it happens in conversation.

Sometimes it happens through songwriting.

And sometimes it happens because someone else helps you see something you've been unable to see yourself.

Not every song on the project emerged from a collaborative environment, though.

Even as Troy has expanded his creative process and spent more time working alongside other people, there's still something meaningful about the space where many of his ideas first begin.

For years, that space was his room.

Long before professional studios entered the picture, it was where he taught himself production, experimented with sounds, and figured out who he wanted to be as an artist.

And even now, despite how much his process has evolved, that connection remains.

"I think being able to make something out of nothing in my room..."

He pauses before finishing the thought, almost as if he's reflecting on it in real time.

"...that's always going to be special."

That feeling becomes especially important when discussing "DARLING," one of the more personal moments on the project.

Unlike songs built around collaboration or outside perspectives, "DARLING" feels rooted in the intimacy that has always existed at the center of Troy's songwriting. It's the kind of track that reminds listeners that before there were collaborators, release schedules, or larger creative plans, there was simply one person trying to translate a feeling into sound.

Listening to Troy talk about the song, it's clear that environment has always mattered to him—not because a room creates the emotion, but because certain spaces make it easier to access.

The bedroom where he first learned production.
The studio sessions where conversations opened new perspectives.
The moments alone between them.

All of it exists within the DNA of the project.

And as the EP continues, those environments begin reflecting a broader shift happening internally.

Because eventually, the songs stop sounding like someone trapped inside the same questions.

They start sounding like someone slowly moving through them.

That transition becomes most visible on "SALTWATER."

"If you have a wound on your leg and you put saltwater on it, it stings, but it's good for you."

The metaphor is simple, but it perfectly captures what the project is ultimately trying to communicate.

Healing isn't always comfortable.

Growth doesn't always feel good while it's happening.

Sometimes the thing helping you move forward is the same thing causing discomfort in the moment.

For Troy, "SALTWATER" became a way of expressing that contradiction.

The sting.

The recovery.

And the understanding that both can exist at the same time.

What makes the emotional progression of NO HEALING WITHOUT HEARTBREAK so effective is that it isn't something Troy consciously built into the project from the beginning.

The shift happened because his life was changing while he was writing it.

Many artists talk about storytelling in hindsight, constructing narratives once the music is already finished. But listening to Troy describe the making of the EP, it becomes clear that the progression listeners hear is simply a reflection of where he was emotionally at different points in time.

The songs changed because he did.

As a result, the project gradually moves from heavier, more emotionally immediate moments into something noticeably lighter. Not necessarily happier in a simplistic sense, but more open. More accepting. More willing to look forward than backward.

When I ask about that progression—from the heartbreak-heavy first half into the brighter energy that begins emerging later in the project—his answer has very little to do with strategy.

Instead, he talks about where his head was at while writing it.

"So I wrote the songs at the time I was finally healing. They started feeling lighter. I started smiling a lot more. I was a lot more happier about some stuff. I was less in my head."

It's one of the most revealing moments of our conversation because it explains the EP's evolution in the simplest way possible.

The music wasn't becoming lighter because he wanted the project to follow a particular narrative arc.

The music was becoming lighter because he was.

That emotional shift naturally found its way into the production too.

"Instrumentally, I started opening up. I started listening to more music as well on the brighter side, and I think that just reflected in the songs on the B-side."

Looking back, it's easy to hear that progression once it's pointed out. The later songs feel more expansive. The weight of the earlier tracks hasn't disappeared, but it no longer occupies the entire frame.

And that's what makes NO HEALING WITHOUT HEARTBREAK feel less like a project about heartbreak and more like a project about movement.

Not staying stuck inside an emotion.

Moving through it.

Looking back now, the title NO HEALING WITHOUT HEARTBREAK feels less like a concept and more like something Troy arrived at through experience.

When he started writing these songs, he wasn't trying to make a statement about healing. He was reacting to what was happening in real time.

Only later did he begin understanding what the experience had actually taught him.

"It was my first heartbreak. I've never felt those emotions before."

Throughout our conversation, Troy returns repeatedly to the idea of self-discovery. Not because he suddenly found all the answers, but because the experience forced him to pay attention to parts of himself he hadn't had to confront before.

"I learned so much about myself during that time. I managed to tap into my emotions more, and I think one of the biggest things I learned was accepting myself for feeling that way."

There's no dramatic lesson packaged neatly at the end of the story. Instead, what stands out is how often he talks about learning to sit with emotions rather than avoid them.

"I learned so much about myself. What was okay, what I thought was okay, what I thought wasn't okay."

The answer feels less like a conclusion and more like someone describing a process that unfolded gradually over time.

A process that eventually became an EP.

That growth becomes most apparent when looking at the distance between the first and final songs on the project.

By the time NO HEALING WITHOUT HEARTBREAK reaches "TALK TO YOU," the emotional landscape has changed dramatically.

Not because every question has been answered.

Not because every wound has disappeared.

But because the person experiencing those emotions is no longer standing in the same place.

When I ask what the version of himself who wrote "DESERVE IT" would think if he could hear the final track, Troy doesn't hesitate.

"I think he would be proud."

The answer lands immediately. Because, unlike many of the earlier questions we discussed, this one isn't about uncertainty. It's about perspective.

"When I wrote 'DESERVE IT,' I didn't really see the light at the end of the tunnel."

At the time, improvement felt difficult to imagine. "I honestly questioned myself so many times thinking, is it going to get better?" It's a question that quietly lingers beneath much of the project's first half.

Then came time.

Then came distance.

Then came the songs that followed.

"When I compare myself when I wrote that song to 'DESERVE IT,' it's like night and day."

More than any other quote in our conversation, that line feels like the emotional center of the entire EP.

Not because it suggests complete transformation. But because it acknowledges progress. The person who wrote the final track isn't a different person. He's simply someone who has had more time, more understanding, and more perspective than the person who wrote the first song.

And ultimately, that's what NO HEALING WITHOUT HEARTBREAK captures so well.

Not a destination.

A journey that was still unfolding while the songs were being written.