Cherishing her roots
Posted on 7 November 2011 - 11:50am
SOMETIMES, success changes you so much, you
become a stranger to yourself. But 19-year-old singing sensation Charice
is determined that this will not happen to her.
The petite Filipino singer, who is reeling from the sudden death of
her father Ricky Pempengco last Monday, was in Kuala Lumpur recently as
part of the David Foster and Friends concert.
It was three years ago that Charice, who plays Sunshine Corazon in the hit TV series Glee, found fame in the American music scene.
“A lot of people tried to change me,” says Charice, who was born in
San Pedro, Laguna, in the Philippines, and whose real name is Charmine
Clarice Relucio Pempengco.
“They wanted me to be a totally different Charice, one you will not recognise.”
But Charice was determined to stick to her Asian roots. “It’s really
important for me to be who I am. I’m not going to wear stuff that I’m
not comfortable with and I won’t do something that I don’t want to do.”
Her road to stardom began in 2006 when she appeared in a TV singing talent show, Little Big Star, in the Philippines and emerged as a finalist.
The following year, she participated in a South Korean TV singing
talent contest. Although she did not win, the videos of her performance
began circulating widely on YouTube which made her popular.
She received invitations to appear in US TV shows like The Ellen DeGeneres Show and Good Morning America. But it was her appearance in The Oprah Winfrey Show that raised her profile.
Dubbed by Oprah as the “most talented girl in the world”, Charice
went on to release her first international album, simply titled Charice, in 2010.
The album entered the Billboard 200 at No.8, making her the first
Asian singer in the history of the music charts to land in the top 10.
Recently, she released her second album titled Infinity, which is slowly creating waves.
“There are a lot of talented people around the world and I consider
myself very lucky to be discovered and blessed with international fame,”
she says.
“I was just a nobody from the Philippines, but in less than three
years, everything happened for me. It’s just like a fairy tale. I feel
like I’m Cinderella.”
But it did not take her long to learn that fame also has its
disadvantages. She has lost her privacy to a certain degree and has
found that some members of the media do not hesitate from asking her
very personal questions.
“Sometimes, I’m surprised that they even bother asking me those
questions,” she says. “I would surely not tell anyone whether or not
I’ve problems with my family or others.”
Besides singing, Charice has also tried her hand at acting. Glee is her first project, and there is a strong possibility that she might return for the third season.
She has also just completed shooting her first feature film titled Here Comes Boom with Salma Hayek and Kevin James.
Directed by Frank Coraci, the comedy centres on a high-school biology
teacher who moonlights as a martial arts fighter in an effort to raise
money to save the school’s music programme. The film will hit the
cinemas in the middle of next year.
When asked whose voice she would really love to have, Charice replies
without any hesitation: “Adele. If you listen to her, you will find she
does not yell much. Yet, there is so much soul in her songs, you could
just feel it. She’s also a great songwriter.”
Charice also admires Lady Gaga and Beyonce’ attitude, fashion
awareness and beautiful voice. One of her wishes is to work with them.
Charice also cites her mother, Raquel, a former vocalist with a band,
as her biggest musical influence. It was her mother who taught Charice
to sing when she was four.
She hopes to be a songwriter and album producer with her own
recording label. Her focus, she says, will be to bring Filipino and
other Asian singers into the international arena, which is her way of
giving back to society.
It appears that she wants to create more ‘Cinderellas’ out there.
However, Charice wants to be more than just a singer/actress. “I
don’t want to be in showbiz forever,” she says. “I want to finish my
studies. I want to read law. I don’t want people to recognise me only as
a singer.”
These days, Charice’s busy schedules in the US does not permit her to
return to her birth country as often as she would like to and she is
missing her family and friends back home.
Meanwhile, Charice has cancelled her upcoming performances in
Indonesia and Singapore, as part of the David Foster and Friends
concert, to return to the Philippines following the murder of her
father.
Charice, who has been estranged from her father for many years, said
in a statement: “I want to thank my fans from around the world for their
support and love at this very difficult time. We are all very sad about
this tragedy.”
According to news reports in Manila, Charice’s father was stabbed on
Monday after a brief encounter with a man at a grocery store outside
Manila.
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