The transnational circulation of Original Pilipino Music (OPM) has expanded significantly over the past two decades. However, scholars have paid limited attention to how kilig, a culturally specific Filipino affect associated with romantic excitement, extended its audience outside the Philippines. This paper argues that kilig functions as a form of musical sentimentality that enables the transnational dissemination of OPM through the semiotic alignment of vocal style, visual persona, and lyrical content. This study uses qualitative methods, which include semi-structured interviews with balladeer Christian Bautista, composer Vehnee Saturno, and Bautista’s former talent manager Carlo Orosa, complemented by textual and audiovisual analyses of songs, music videos, lyric visualizers, and archival materials. It traces the evolution of OPM transnationalism from the song-centric exports of Jose Mari Chan and Vehnee Saturno during the 1980s and 1990s to Bautista's regional success in the 2000s that focused on his stardom. This reflected the platform-driven globalization of Filipino contemporary artists such as SB19, BINI, and Maki. This demonstrates that Bautista's sustained popularity in Indonesia resulted not only from his musical repertoire but also from the alignment of multinational record labels, talent management, visual branding, localized repertoire, and vocal performability. Songs such as Sa'yo Lamang and Bersamamu further illustrate a shift from one-way cultural exportation toward reciprocal cultural exchange. The study shows that kilig has evolved into a shared affective language circulating across Asian music industries, demonstrating how affect, media institutions, and performer branding collectively facilitate the transnational mobility of Filipino popular music in the digital era.