Charice Pempengco

On first glance, Charmaine Clarice Relucio Pempengco also known as Charice Pempengco looks like any other teenager, pretty, petite, filled with energy and a wide and engaging smile. But when the sweet-faced 17-year old starts to sing, with a profound, rich voice, the audience quite literally gasp. And as 13 million hits on YouTube tell us, that audience is growing at a staggering pace. As Oprah Winfrey said during a recent Charice performance on her show, “You are a force to be reckoned with. That voice comes from something bigger than yourself. You’re pulling it up out of some place deeper than your little body.” Producer David Foster concurred and instantly signed Charice to his 143/Reprise Records.

Born and raised in the Philippines, Charice is no newcomer to the stage. Her talent was discovered at age 4 when her mother, a singer herself, noticed her daughter’s loud, rather enthusiastic version of “Happy Birthday” and decided to teach her proper vocal technique. By age 7, Charice was competing in local contests and belting out songs by Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion.

A few months later, FalseVoice released a video of Pempengco singing the Dreamgirls anthem. This earned her an invitation from one of the four national television networks in South Korea, Seoul Broadcasting System, on October 13, 2007 to perform on a talent show called Star King. The Korean audience was wowed by her rendition of “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” She also sang a duet, “A Whole New World”, with Cho Kyu Hyun of Super Junior. Many viewers reposted her Star King performance on YouTube, and Pempengco found her way into American television. TV network E!’s The Daily Ten featured her Star King performance with the headline, “A Star Is Born” on November 14, 2007 and then titled her “Queen of the Week” on the Hollywood Royalty segment, this time with the headline, “A Queen Is Born” on November 16, 2007.

Martin Nievera invited Charice Pempengco also to one of his concerts on December 5, 2007, where she sang a duet “The Prayer” with him and solo the song “One Moment in Time”.

Pempengco’s performance on Star King was featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on its November 28, 2007 episode, in which Ellen showed web videos of different people she would like to have as guests on the show. After showing the video, DeGeneres did a standing ovation and imitated Pempengco’s gestures. She later personally invited the young singer to perform on the show.

On December 19, 2007, Charice sang her already popular “And I Am Telling You, I’m Not Going” and “I Will Always Love You” on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. She also met with David Foster and her lawyer Ed Shapiro.

Right after coming back from the USA, Charice flew to Korea in order to tape her performance once again for the popular show Star King, where she sang “I will survive” and a duet with the popular Korean singer Lena Park. The song they chose was “I will always love you”. SBS aired the show then on December 29, 2007.

On January 4, 2008 Charice Pempengco paid a courtesy call with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. On January 18, 2008, it was reported that Pempengco was in talks with Clive Davis, Chairman and CEO of RCA Music Group to be signed to a record deal. She can now compete Sarah Geronimo and Rachelle Ann Go. According to some news, she has actively 4.5 Octave Vocal Range.
Enter 15-time Grammy winning producer David Foster who invited Charice to perform on his David Foster and Friends PBS Show at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas alongside such star studded names as Michael Bublé, Celine Dion, Andrea Bocelli, Katharine McPhee and Josh Groban. When the David Foster and Friends show returned to the Mandalay Bay this spring, Charice received no less than six standing ovations. In between the two Vegas appearances, Charice went on to perform with Andrea Bocelli (“The Prayer”) in Tuscany and Celine Dion at her Madison Square Garden show in New York City. “It was a dream come true. She’s my idol. I felt like the luckiest kid in the world,” confessed Charice in People Magazine on her experience performing on Celine Dion’s stage.

History

Charice Pempengco is a singing sensation throughout the world through YouTube. She started joining singing contests at the age of seven but became widely known in her native Philippines when she placed third in Little Big Star. Pempengco joined Little Big Star in 2005, when she was only 12 years old. She was eliminated right away but was later picked in a wild card round to re-enter the competition. She worked her way up to become a finalist. She was a consistent top scorer during the early rounds. But during the finals, she only finished third place, while Sam Concepcion got first place. Since this singing contest Charice Pempengco is under contract with Star Records, a subsidiary of ABS-CBN.

Pempengco first attracted attention in the cyberworld when the FalseVoice channel of YouTube posted her Little Big Star performance of Whitney Houston’s hit, “I Will Always Love You.” Many viewers thought her singing was fake, and that she was only lip singing because of her unbelievable vocals. Another popular video was a face-off between Pempengco and America’s Got Talent winner, Bianca Ryan. These videos brought Pempengco to the attention of Ten Songs Productions, a record company based in Sweden. She then traveled to Stockholm in June 2007 and recorded seven songs, which included three cover songs. There is no news about when an album will be released.