Apparently, Saab Magalona was a very angry girl.

In the span of this forty-something minute interview, she's confessed her love for the emo band Thursday and abhorrence for fair weather friends. She's already said variations of "I don't have friends" three times.

When later on, she says that she likes writing about non-fiction because she writes about herself, you don't take it as self-obsession but as some sort of self-flagellation. "I have issues," she says, leaving us to fill in the blanks of a writer in catharsis mode. 2009 has given Saab a lot of reason to go into catharsis mode. The fifth daughter of the late rap icon Francis Magalona, this was the year when the spotlight shone most brightly, and as a result most scorchingly, on Saab. The year began with rumors of fighting within the Magalona family—Saab against mom Pia, Saab against older sister Maxene, Saab against everybody. Eventually, they made up. In March, dad Francis passed away, succumbing to multiple organ failure.

By April, reports of a romance with actor-model Victor Basa were rampant and she had become a full-fledged celebrity, the kind whose personal life is of real interest to people. The icing on the cake, of course, was her expulsion from the show Lipgloss. Citing disobedience, she was sacked, the rags effectively painting her as some sort of local Lindsay Lohan, complete with the family issues and professional lapses.

Saab has always had a hard time reconciling a personal life with the glare of showbiz. "One time… [in high school, before I started acting] these people

came up to me to tell me that they thought I'd be taller. They thought I was Max and they wondered why I was shorter and a little chubbier," she says, with emphasis on the word "chubbier," reckless with the vowel, as if she was spitting the word at them. Incidents like this were part and parcel of the daughter-of-a-celebrity course and Saab didn't take it well. "I was pissed off so I decided to cut my hair short, dye it purple and have my rebel phase," she says. She never really fit in during high school ("the girls were the mahinhin ones"), and maybe not even in college.

But it's at this moment when I realize that Saab Magalona is not "emo," as she jokingly described herself early on. She is, in fact, just a normal girl who doesn't quite fit into the mold. It's trying to fit a square into a circle; and Saab is no circle. She's a tough, solid, jagged-edged square going against the smooth, feminine curves of circledom. Moreover, she's just a girl trying to grow up—fighting with her mom and whatever else growing up entails.

The difference is that every family spat is magnified to national newspaper proportions and every date is everybody's business. The difference is that she has journalists like me Googling her—conveniently summarizing her life into a timeline and her growing pains as talking points.

Saab today is a lot happier. The death of her father helped her weed out the fake friends and keep the good ones. She has never been closer to her family. “This year really made me aware of what I want to do and myself as a person.”

Later, she lets me listen to some of her demos. It's at this point that Saab is most quiet and, just a little bit nervous. She asks me what I think and I say it's great, not because she's in front of me and asking, but because it's actually good. It sounds like Portishead, with a little bit of Kylie Minogue for good measure.

"May future ako," she exclaims triumphantly. And then you realize that you don't have to worry about Saab Magalona, that she will get through these growing pains and establish herself as her own woman, away from her iconic father and famous sister.

"I want to be a rock star," she confesses. "Not the stereotypical stuff that comes with it. I want to spend the day doing stuff I wanna do and then at night go to music bars singing and performing."

At the end of our interview, we end up talking and she raves about her current favorite, Mayer Hawthorne. "You have to listen to him," she says. She whips out her iPod and gives me one earphone.

"Ooh I may not drive a new Mercedes," she croons. "But I'll chauffeur my girl to the edge of the world." A funny thing happens when Saab Magalona is singing along to the music she loves—completely in her element, she becomes invincible.

Saab takes the 2009 Quiz
Book of the Year: Augusten Burroughs’ Wolf At The Table
Album of the Year: Mayer Hawthorne’s A Strange Arrangement
Movie of the Year: (500) Days of Summer
Show of the Year: Community
Hangout of the Year: Mag:net High Street
Obsession of the Year: Kirsten Dunst, this year and every year
Man of the Year: My dad
Woman of the Year: Lady Gaga, especially the “Bad Romance” music video
Event of the Year: Going to the zoo for my birthday

True Blood or Vampire Diaries? Neither
Jacob or Edward? Edward
Taylor or Kanye? Kanye
Gossip Girl or Lipgloss? Gossip Girl, there’s no comparison
Jinkee or Krista? Jinkee
Twitter or Facebook? Twitter

Lust For Life: Saab’s 2009 Soundtrack
1.Albert Hammond Jr. – In Transit
2.Andre 3000 and Norah Jones – Take Off Your Cool
3.Best Coast – Sun Was High (So Was I)
4.Bon Iver – Skinny Love
5.The Cool Kids – A Little Bit Cooler
6.Girls – Lust For Life
7.Michael Jackson – Man in the Mirror
8.Justice and Uffie – The Party
9.Jay Z and Alicia Keys – Empire State of Mind
10.La Roux – Bulletproof
11.Santigold = L.E.S. Artistes
12.Mayer Hawthorne – Make Her Mine