Charice Pempengco on Oprah TV show
goodnewspilipinas.com
First Posted 14:12:00 04/26/2008
THE 15-year-old singing wunderkind is very busy making her rounds of the top international talk shows, from Sweden, Korea, the United States and, only last week, England, as a sought-after guest on TV shows that beamed her awesome, lung-busting vocal skills globally.
Charice just recently taped a special episode for “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” where she shares the stage with other gifted children. The episode airs in May.
Her most recent appearance was on the “Paul O'Grady Show.”
“Nakakatuwa, pinaghandaan talaga nila,” Charice says, referring to the top-rating British talk-comedy program. “Meron pang fireworks, para mas maganda raw habang kumakanta ako.”
The songs she sang -- the “Dreamgirls” anthem “And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going” and Whitney Houston's “I Will Always Love You -- were exactly what she rendered in her now world-famous stints on “Star King” in South Korea and the “Ellen DeGeneres Show” in the US. “‘Yun ang hiniling nila, kung ano raw ang napanood nila sa ‘Ellen,'” Charice explains.
The studio audience on the “Paul O'Grady Show” gave her a standing ovation. She says she was told it was the first time ever.
All the attention would not have been possible, she says, without the single-handed stroke of genius of Dave Dueñas, a.k.a. FalseVoice on the YouTube channel. A 19-year-old nursing student at Perpetual Help College, Las Piñas, who also happens to be a techno geek, Dave uploaded Charice's taped performances on YouTube, the popular video-sharing Web site whose total viewers have reached 79 million as of January this year.
Charice says Dueñas was a complete stranger and only when she sought him out through e-mail did she discover why he fancied her videos. “Kasi raw natatawa siya dun sa nanalong contestant sa “America's Got Talent.” Mas magaling daw ako kaya pinagsama niya yung video namin.” Said videos paved the way for all succeeding uploads now currently seen by people around the globe 24/7.
The phenomenal exposure has paid off on a slow but steadily increasing rate. “Lahat ng TV appearances ni Charice sa abroad libre, pero napakalaking tulong,” mom Raquel says. “Sa ‘Oprah' binigyan siya ng shopping money.”
The guest stint with Paul O'Grady reportedly happened on the recommendation of David Foster, the music industry stalwart who has produced albums for the likes of Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and Josh Groban.
Charice laughs, saying Foster took her by the hand and introduced her as “my new singer” to the American press when they attended a high-profile show biz affair.
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