Talk show host Ellen Degeneres on her recent show of the same name was mentioning about the awesome singing talent from the Philippines and wants to invite multi-platinum Rock Band Journey new lead singer Arnel Pineda to guest in her show.
Here's a segment of the broadcast expressing her interest in inviting Arnel Pineda:
Talks are in process to have Journey's Arnel Pineda, as well as the whole band of JOURNEY--Neal Schon (guitar), Jonathan Cain (keyboards), Ross Valory (bass), Deen Castronovo (drums) and Arnel Pineda (vocals), who is originally from the Philippines, to be on the "Ellen Degeneres Show." It is amazing that Arnel sings so good (too good to be true)that Ellen quips HE IS NOT lipsinging! Ellen surely knows great talent when she hears one. Ellen have acknowledged that there is a lot of singers that are really good from the Philippines and have featured the Philippine young Filipina singer Charice Pempengco on her show which drew a lot of viewer attention.
Pineda, on the other hand, is no overnight success. A 40-year professional singer with quite a reputation in Manila's clubs, he looked set to join the legion of talented, but relatively unrewarded, singers who never break into the big-time.
One video posted online of Pineda performing with his Zoo band in a Makati nightclub changed all that.
More than 7,000 miles away in California, Neal Schon, founder and guitarist of the rock band Journey, downloaded a clip of Pineda singing their hit "Faithfully" on YouTube, and knew his search for a new frontman had ended.
"After watching the video over and over again, I had to walk away from the computer and let what I heard sink in because it sounded too good to be true," Schon said in a statement posted on Journey's Web site.
In two of the latest whirlwind career turnarounds launched by the video-sharing Web site (www.youtube.com), Filipino singers Charice Pempengco and Arnel Pineda have shot from relative obscurity to levels of success surprising even to them.
Fifteen-year-old Pempengco thought her music career was doomed when she lost a local singing competition in 2006.
But YouTube gave her the "cyber break" of a lifetime, when a clip of her singing Jennifer Holliday's "And I'm Telling You I am Not Going" caught the attention of TV host Ellen DeGeneres and Grammy award winning producer David Foster.
News media have reported that YouTube, the internet video sharing website, have given the Filipinos the "Cyber Break" they need to be discovered and launched into the world stage. This is no surprise though: Filipinos do have great talent.
by Jay Fermin