Charice Pempengco – Born with a Superb Mission
Born on May 10, 1992 in San Pedro, Laguna, Philippines, Charmaine Clarice Relucio Pempengco popularly known as Charice Pempengco is a born singer and a total performer. Oprah Winfrey knew better than us as she dubbed Charice to be the Most Talented Girl in the World as supported by being the very first Asian in history to land in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 album chart. Experts say that for you to do that, you need to be an American national or to be born in America for that matter.
Charice Pempengco was born with a mission by being given an ultra big voice at her age an size. Since childhood, she already participated in over a hundred amateur singing contests both big and small time in order to support her family. Charice and her family live on their own as her father and mother has been separated for long.
Charice Pempengco – Her Low Profile Singing Career
It was in 2005 when Charice Pempengco tried seeking her God-given blessings by joining Little Big Star, an American Idol-like talent show in the Philippines. Charice did not make it on her first performance, but was later called back as a wildcard contender and eventually became a finalist. Without a question, Charice was the most talented as evident in consistently topping the scores in the final rounds, but she became a victim of a bias and unfair practice of text voting. We all knew that regardless of how good you are, you will not be on top if you have no big fan-based enough to vote for you through SMS. And for Charice to gain big fan-based, she must have the height and the body to show at least even if the contest is intended for kids only. Unfortunately, Charice wasn’t blesssed with either of the two. Call me an ignorant, but that’s my wholehearted opinion.
Charice Pempengco did not make it into bigtime overnight. In fact, after making minor appearances on local television shows and commercials, her popularity dwindled significantly and essentially had fallen off the radar after her stint at Little Big Star.
Thanks to an avid fan of Charice who tirelessly posting a series of her performance videos on Youtube under the username FalseVoice. These videos received millions of hits making Pempengco an internet phenomenon and started gaining worldwide recognition.
Charice Pempengco – Her Appearances Abroad
| Show | Date |
| Demo-recording for Ten Songs/Productions, a music publishing company in Stockholm, Sweden. Recorded seven songs – six covers and an original song entitled “Amazing”. A few of these songs were rerecorded for her self-titled Philippine album, Charice. | 06-04-2007 |
| South Korean talent show Star King . Performed two songs “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going” and “A Whole New World” with Kyuhyun from the popular South Korean boy band Super Junior. | 10-13-2007 |
| The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Performed two songs – “I Will Always Love You” and “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”. | 12-17-2007 |
| Star King as the “Most Requested Foreign Act”
Performed Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” and sang a duet with singer Lena Park. |
12-08-2007 |
| Malacañang Palace in January 2008 where she performed for Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The Paul O’Grady Show in London, England. | 01-01-2008 |
| Philippine debut album Charice was released in May 2008. The mini album, consisting of six songs and six backing tracks, was awarded gold certification in the Philippines in October 2008. The album was eventually recognized to have achieved platinum status in 2009. | 05-06-2008 |
| The Oprah Winfrey Show the “World’s Smartest Kids”
Performed “I Have Nothing.” Oprah Winfrey recommended Charice to David Foster MGM Grand at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard, Connecticut. |
05-12-2008
05-17-2008 |
| International concert stage in Foster’s tribute concert, Hitman: David Foster and Friends, at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Performed a medley of songs from The Bodyguard as well as her standard, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”. | 05-23-2008 |
| One of the singers at the concert was Pempengco’s idol, Andrea Bocelli. Bocelli subsequently expressed interest in performing a duet with her and personally invited her to be a guest on his birthday concert “The Cinema Tribute” at the Teatro del Silenzio in his hometown of Lajatico, Tuscany, Italy. Aside from her solo performance, she sang a duet of “The Prayer” with the famous tenor in front of more than 8,000 people. | 07-20-2008 |
| Feyenoord’s Centennial Anniversary in the. Before a crowd of about 50,000 football (soccer) fans she sang the team’s anthem, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” | 09-06-2008 |
| Performed “Dreams Come True” episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Oprah referred to her as “The Most Talented Girl in the World.” She sang Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” with David Foster on piano. Celine Dion her to sing a special duet at New York City’s Madison Square Garden as part of Dion’s Taking Chances Tour. | 09-09-2008 |
| Performed her promised duet with Celine Dion. They sang “Because You Loved Me,” dedicated to Pempengco’s mother. The performance received rave reviews in The New York Post and The New York Times. The duet was eventually featured on the September 19 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show She would then perform at the Andre Agassi Grand Slam for Children Benefit Concert at the Wynn Las Vegas casino resort. | 09-15-2008 |
| With David Foster guested on Good Morning America to promote Foster’s tribute album, Hitman: David Foster and Friends. Charice performed The Bodyguard medley and “I Will Survive.” At the end of the month, she performed “Because You Loved Me” on the Good Housekeeping Showboat float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. | 11-04-2009 |
| Performed at two presidential pre-inaugural events in Washington, D.C., namely the Martin Luther King Jr. Realizing The Dream Gala at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and at the Pearl Presidential Inaugural Gala at the Mandarin Hotel. | 01-12-2009 |
| Performed at two post-Oscar award events, Oscar Night at Mr. Chow’s and Oprah’s Oscar After Party held in Kodak Theatre. Debuted a new original song entitled “Fingerprint”, which was written by Robbie Nevil and produced by David Foster. | 02-15-2009 |
| Premiere of Ti lascio una canzone, an Italian musical variety show televised from Teatro Ariston in the city of Sanremo. Performed “I Will Always Love You”, “I Have Nothing”, “The Prayer”, and “Listen”. Later that same month, she would go on to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” in front of about 57,000 baseball fans during the Los Angeles Dodgers 52nd season home opener at Dodger Stadium. | 04-18-2009 |
| Release of her Philippine second album entitled My Inspiration. The album consisted of 12 tracks, including an original composition by Jonathan Manalo entitled “Always You” and a cover of Helen Reddy’s “You and Me Against the World” performed as a duet with her mother. | 05-06-2009 |
| “Finale: Oprah’s Search for the World’s Most Talented Kids” of The Oprah Winfrey Show, Charice debuted her first internationally released single “Note to God”, written by Diane Warren and produced by David Foster. | 05-18-2009 |
| First Major solo concert dubbed Charice: The Journey Begins at the SMX Convention Center, SM Mall of Asia, Philippines to a sold-out crowd. | 06-27-2009 |
| Pempengco contributed to two Christmas albums in 2009. The first as David Archuleta’s duet partner for the song “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” in his Christmas album entitled Christmas from the Heart. The second is a compilation Christmas album entitled A Very Special Christmas Volume 7 in which she contributed her own rendition of “The Christmas Song”. Charice was one of the headlining acts in the David Foster and Friends 10-City North American Tour. | 11-15-2009 |
| Cameo appearance in her first feature film, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel, released in North America. ”No One” by Alicia Keys accompanied by The Chipettes. Charice on Singapore Idol’s grand finale episode as a guest performer, where she performed two of her signature songs, The Bodyguard medley and “Note to God”. | 12-12-2009 |
I wish you have posted accomplishments and updates until June 2010 the latest, because this is where this really highlight the ultimate rise of her career. Anyways, thanks for this very informative data you provided…you really did your homework.
You were right about your observation on low text votes that seemingly halted her rise to fame. In my opinion though, ABS-CBN is a powerful network, if they really believe in a talent, they would do everything in their power to do as they pleased, that included boosting up Charice’s career, unfortunately, they didn’t. All things do work together to them who are called according to God’s purpose…I believe also, God had other much better plans for Charice. That is what I call blessing in disguise
.