Go Charice! 18 Creative Lessons To Singing Stardom

Revised 03 August 2010 at 0550 hours
MANILA - Having researched extensively & intensively in order to write a book about Charice in the last 11 months since September 2009, and being now in my final revision of the manuscript, I can now offer you several insights into this young girl´s life so far:

(1) I am dumbstruck that the first Asian singing wundergirl to break down the walls of Jericho of the American music industry is a small girl from my own small country, the Philippines.
(2) After all is said and done, Charice's story is about sustaining and selling a singing talent, neither more important than the other.
(3) It´s about the power of YouTube, that which gave birth to the first YouTube Cinderella, the virtual father being another Filipino, a wunderboy.
(4) It´s about keeping faith and living amidst headaches and hindrances and keeping one´s wit & humor alive among family, friends, and fans.
(5) For talents like Charice as an original singer with a truly divine voice, I have seen the need for rebel writers online and offline, each with a truly creative vocabulary, matching talent for talent. There are no boring stories, only boring tellers of stories. The Internet is modern mass media; as the pyramids are, we are ancient mass mediamen.

Going the way Charice has been into, as a writer and a human being, I´ve learned a hard lesson or two myself. In YouTube Charice, in both the Studio Version and Official Music Video for her single "Pyramid," first, I crossed swords with those who had foul language and made them eat their own words - with wicked wit & humor and endless vocabulary. Many readers enjoyed those repartees and told me so. Of course, I enjoyed it too, immensely. Then, I realized that by throwing my vocabulary at YouTube, I was throwing negatives myself. That´s when I reinvented Frank H and became a Flip, a Filipino who loves & inspires positively. I then turned to those who insisted on Tagalog comments, because they were the ones who tended to come up with immensely objectionable vocabulary. I came up with a series to promote English; here´s an example: "English Quest #02 NO TO TAGALOG. With your insistence on Tagalog, you are not helping increase the chances of Charice gaining millions and millions more admirers or listeners - instead, you are hurting her chances. If you insist, we will have good reason to say that you don´t really want to support Charice, or you´re just pretending." And then I came up with a 2nd series: "MG #01 MUSICAL GENIUS. David Foster says of Charice, "She´s a musical genius. She can rearrange a song so easily, as if she´s just picking a dress from the closet." She actually helps him rearrange, pointing out where to raise the key and where to drop it, where her voice turns. To avoid despair, I was trying to inspire everyone, including the crabs, about Charice. I said inspire, not despair.

And so it happened that, in revising at least 5 times the whole book since I finished the first complete draft of 18 chapters in late April 2010, or about 3 months ago, at one point an idea flashed in my mind that Charice's story so far has lessons for those young girls who dream of becoming like her. So, here I present my young readers, parents and advocates a unique, original set of lessons that comprise what I call "Go Charice! 18 Creative Lessons to Singing Stardom." As a singer, you must learn to be creative, and learn from the experience of others. Charice's experience is the best teacher.

Go Charice! Lesson # 01: Be the best copycat first!
Copying, Charice can sing like Celine Dion, guaranteed 100%, as David Foster will say. If you don´t copy from the best first, you can´t learn how to be better. Filipinos all, Freddie Aguilar called Charice and Arnel Pineda apes for copying American singers. Of course, they were copycats. Copying is a stage of growth of an artist. Artists are copycats first before they come into their own. Been there, done that! As a writer, I myself started by copying the styles of American writers Ernest Hemingway, Ray Bradbury, Norman Mailer; British writers Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw; German-American Rudolf Flesch and the outstanding Filipino writer Nick Joaquin, very consciously, doggedly and deliberately. Now I´m on my own, an original writer; now I´m so original I don´t have to imitate myself. As her story shows, Charice is coming into her own now, an original singer; her self-titled album CHARICE is so original some people can´t believe it´s her. May the best copycat win!

Go Charice! Lesson # 02: Give up a loss, not hope.
Charice joined 100 singing contests; won some, lost some. She dreamed of winning the 1-million-peso Little Big Star singing contest of ABS-CBN in Manila: she lost, coming up only 3rd place. She almost couldn´t take it; she was depressed for months. She wanted to give up on her dream of a singing career, but Mommy Raquel would not let her. Give up the loss, not give up hope. Hang on to your family. Today, Charice is an international superstar. At what age should one begin to dream? I say, from 8 to 88? I have had many dreams lost myself; I´ve had my own depressing years, not just months. Then I returned to the Roman Catholic fold, and the community quietly helped my climb up to a better me. About 5 years ago, at 65, I began dreaming of being the best one-man-band book writer from Manila. Today I have written & desktop-published 5 books, with 3 published abroad. Don´t forget the Internet; today I am a regular and respected contributor to American Chronicle, and I maintain at least 7 blogs. I hold that as Charice's international stardom is The Revenge of the Unprized Singer, so blogging is The Revenge of the Unpublished Writer.

Go Charice! Lesson # 03: Pray for a wizard, or be your own.
After the debacle of Little Big Star, being Roman Catholics, Charice, Mommy Raquel and brother Carl went to Quiapo Church in Manila. They didn´t know anything about personal computers, Internet, and YouTube, but they prayed hard. Charice prayed: God, let it be Your will, but let it be a miracle to show them that I can do what they´re saying I can´t. Or words to that effect. Does God mind your vocabulary? No, I don´t believe so. Does God listen to the prayers of a little girl? Yes, but not so fast! They had to wait a great many months. The Tagalog composition "Maghintay Ka Lamang" (Just You Wait) became the family´s theme song. And, having waited, to them came the wizard of YouTube: FalseVoice. He uploaded the Charice videos that were seen and heard around the world, including by Star King, and Charice's guesting in that Korean TV show had the domino effect and gave us Ellen DeGeneres and, later Oprah and David Foster. Without FalseVoice, we don´t have the Charice we have today, and Charice knows that, and she is ever thankful. Look for your own wizard! Sans FalseVoice, have your own dedicated website and upload videos in YouTube, and make sure both website and YouTube are complementary, helping each other in marketing you. A website and YouTube aren´t everything, but they make an excellent pair of mass media for promoting talent. A wizard is someone who is creative with technology, old or new. Have faith on somebody´s creativity, or your own.

Go Charice! Lesson # 04: Sell your dreams.
After all is said and done, based on my experience in copywriting for Pacifica Publicity Bureau in Manila in the mid-1970s, with David Ogilvy being everyone´s ubiquitous if unobtrusive mentor, you will need the 4 Ps of classical marketing: packaging (because you must let the whole world know what you are good at), positioning (what differentiates you from the rest), pricing (at what cost can they engage your services), and promotion (you must sell the other 3 Ps). Certainly, you need a marketing team, even if that team happens to be made up of only 2 members. You will need to promote yourself too. Charice is into the Internet: Twitter, YouTube, her own websites, Facebook, and she encourages her fans. Except the fan sites, she has control over substance and style. She is a quiet genius. And she is studying (BA in Communication) so she can be a more effective if not eloquent talker and writer. Eventually, she wants to be a lawyer, for people in the entertainment business. Don´t stop dreaming, but don´t stop marketing yourself either. It also means don´t stop believing in yourself.

Go Charice! Lesson # 05: Find yourself a fairy godmother.
A fairy godmother is someone who loves to make people´s dreams come true. Charice has one-in-a-million Oprah. Well, Charice is a one-in-a-million Filipino Cinderella. And yes, Charice has guested in Oprah 4 times already. In one Oprah episode, Charice´s performance outshone all other star performances for 2009. More realistically, unless you were born into a rich family, you will have to make yourself worthy, and then have your marketing team (or someone who believes in you) plan your future, then go find a rich relative or a willing sponsor to finance your growth as an artist. You have to invest in your own future; if not, you have to find someone who believes in you and has the resources, a godmother; remember, a godmother often has a magic wand. And don´t forget where you came from; Oprah always reminds Charice when they meet, "Always keep your feet on the ground, even when you´re wearing nice shoes!" Let´s go back to the fairy tale; didn´t you notice that Cinderella goes back to her old self at midnight? Her fairy godmother is telling her not to forget where she came from!

Go Charice! Lesson # 06: Exceed people´s expectations.
Charice auditioned for Alvin & The Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. She was asked to read the script; she read. She was asked to sing; she sang. What she wasn´t asked to do, she volunteered - imitating the voices of 3 Chipmunks: Simon, Alvin, Theodore in one breath. They loved her for that. They rewarded her with a cameo squeaked into the final script - she appeared in the film as herself, and the emcee announced her name as a singing contestant: "Charice!" Don´t try hard - give it your best shot. Always. That means you have to keep being better and better. Good is not good enough. As David Foster likes to tell Charice, "Good is the enemy of Great."

Go Charice! Lesson # 07: Cherish your mother.
Mommy Raquel has been Charice´s vocal coach, musical tutor, best friend, fashion designer, choreographer, stage mother. After her Little Big Star loss in 2006, Charice wanted to quit, but Raquel kept her faith in her daughter and cajoled her to go on. Thank God for mothers who keep faith! Right from the beginning, your mother would be your best partner in your journey to stardom. If you don´t have a Mommy Raquel, you will have to look for someone, preferably a close relative who can become your best friend, coach, advocate, ally, all-around gofer onstage, offstage. Mommy Raquel is a stage mother - and Charice needs her to be. Your best relative - same sex I must say - will have to be a stage mother too; she is attending to your needs while you are attending to your talent. But best of all, make your mother last forever.

Go Charice! Lesson # 08: Have an ally critique the critics.
Before Charice´s 1st solo concert at the Mall of Asia in the Philippines, she had been lambasted by arch critic Nestor Torre who equated her singing with mere screaming and didn´t give a damn about the girl´s talent. I respected Torre, but this was too much. From out of the blue, as she didn´t know me from Adam, and neither did he, I defended Charice in the American Chronicle and in my blog, Pinoy Cinderella / DreamsGirl Charice. I showed that Torre was in fact the one who was screaming and I threw back his own words at him to consider for future undertakings. I wrote my critique a year after Torre´s vocabulary outburst, but I don´t think it was too late the hero, as this critic is much too respected to be ignored. Almost always I resort to humor (satire) in responding to such protestations. Critics are truly indispensable when they are intelligent and are aware that they could be wrong; otherwise, the rantings of critics are laughable. Still, critics lurk everywhere and you need an ally in the mass media and/or the Internet. You are entitled to self-defense; you are not guilty until proven otherwise. Critics are guilty until proven otherwise.

Go Charice! Lesson # 09: Risk with your heart.
If her 1st ever solo concert in the Philippines in June 2009 was a big risk, her 1st solo concert in America was an even bigger risk, being at the Big E (the Eastern States Exposition) in September 2009 in West Springfield, Massachusetts. The Big E is the largest fair in the northeast United States. Can a little girl with a big voice from a little country capture the hearts of the Americans in their homeland? Even Mommy Raquel was intimidated. Not Charice. She even made a joke onstage about her own mother being afraid for her. That was self-confidence. Her heart was in the right place, in her singing. And she soared on eagle´s wings. She had standing ovations. "You made me cry," she said at one point during the concert, touched by the audience´s response to her performance. Here was this little girl with a big voice and an even bigger heart. Courage is Charice under pressure.

Go Charice! Lesson # 10: Multiply yourself.
Charice is a multi-talented wunderkind, and she´s only 18. She can sing, strum a guitar, play the piano, draw, do rap, compose, act, sing in many voices, imitate any singer, even imitate the Chipmunks. She can even amuse herself productively. You can bore yourself to death unless you entertain yourself with your own talents. To be more interesting, to increase the width and depth of your performances, multiply your interests. As a singer, you have to learn more songs; learn new songs. Learn even foreign songs. And don´t forget - learn them all by heart. To insinuate the multiple talents of this young girl, I have written an essay that tells the story of Charmaine Clarice "Charice" Relucio Pempengco in bits & pieces, with a hundred twists (see "100 Charice. Mod parables of the talents of Ming," American Chronicle). And yes, with "100 Charice," I have reinvented the FAQs. And you? You have to reinvent yourself.

Go Charice! Lesson # 11: Give the best love.
When Charice performs, she always gives her all. That´s what makes her happy as a performer. I was witness up close when I attended her Valentine´s Day concert she conducted with Maestro Ryan Cayabyab and the RC Singers in Manila 14 February 2010. I was seated at Row A, VIP Section; I could feel the vibrations of love. Even when she is not singing of love, performing live, she embraces you with her song, an experience you´ll never forget. It´s what a performance should always be: lovely, enfolding, unforgettable. What does an 18-year old who has never fallen in love know about love? Go watch her and find out for yourself. "Mommy taught me to sing from the heart," she says. Don´t sing with your lips; rather, sing with your love.

Go Charice! Lesson # 12: Enjoy & people will enjoy you.
If you haven´t done so, go look at Charice performing in the Studio Version of the music video of her 2nd single, "Pyramid" at YouTube. She´s a joy to observe as she´s enjoying herself. I remember I was dumbstruck myself on 07 March 2010 when I first watched the Studio Version (referred to at that time as the Unofficial Music Video). I was happy that she was happy. In the Official Music Video, which came out later, the story is that she is eliminated from the singing competition, but then she can dream, can´t she? She does, and the joy shows. In the final minutes, I just love watching her shaking up her head and her hair flying. Sadness is infectious, and so is joy - always choose joy.

Go Charice! Lesson # 13: Be a surprise to the world.
Look at the totality of the Studio Version of the music video of "Pyramid" and the simplicity of it all. Charice is fully dressed and fully in control of her performance. You get a double whammy watching this video when you realize that with it, Charice has successfully reinvented the music video so that now: female bodies rolling over and showing various parts of the female anatomy are cheap; computer-generated images are superfluous; and autotune is entirely unnecessary. Same with the Official Music Video of "Pyramid." The other modern music video makers can learn from the modern Pyramid. Singing is for entertaining people, not distracting them.

Go Charice! Lesson # 14: Don´t crab on the crabs.
Expect contrary people. Frank H is a Filipino; the Filipinos are known to be, among other things, crabs, standing on other people and trying to pull down the ones above them. Charice knows that. You have to learn to deal with crabs: with a forgiving heart. Charice has that. The crabs can´t help themselves but be, until they start using their heads and not their claws. In dealing with the crabs in YouTube, I learned the hard way. They taught me a lesson that I will not easily forget: Even with humor, if you crab on the crabs, you become one of them.

Go Charice! Lesson # 15: Win your enemies over.
There will be lots of enemies, and they may turn out to be among whom you consider friends. Charice knows that all too well. You must try and keep on winning friends anyway. And the only way to do that is to love your enemies to death! Filipinos, be Flips! Clue: Flips is acronym for Filipinos who love & inspire positively. Charice is an original Flip. If you´re not a Filipino, be a Flip anyway: a fellow who loves & inspires positively. Learn from Charice and Gilbert "Gibo" Teodoro, the only presidential candidate who has ever had a positive campaign. Flips are always winners.

Go Charice! Lesson # 16: Do little acts of love, always.
I find quite a few parallels in the lives of a saint and a singer, St Therese and Charice. Whatever you do, you must love the little things you have to do to go on, to get better, to get ahead. At the Carmel monastery in Lisieux, St Therese of the Little Flower dedicated her little acts of love - her little sacrifices - to Jesus; on or off the stage, Charice loves what she does and dedicates every bit of every song she sings as her little acts of love to everyone. In other words, make love a habit.

Go Charice! Lesson # 17: Love and let love.
As one, Charice and her Mommy Raquel are a gift to the world. They love each other - and what´s more, they support each other. Yes, the mother handholds the daughter, and the daughter handholds the mother. You better believe it! Their example is true wealth, a legacy to mothers and daughters with much more than just talents to share with the rest of the world. Mothers, handhold your daughters; daughters, handhold your mothers! That is what I discovered and now call the Mommy & Ming Love Legacy. (Read their story; for details, see my "Charice & Raquel. The Mommy & Ming Love Legacy," American Chronicle.) I have yet to read about a Mother-Daughter team like that in the whole entertainment world. If they´re Filipinos, mothers and daughters last forever.

Go Charice! Lesson # 18: Flaunt your competitive advantage.
Charice is now variously referred to as "Pop Princess" by Ryan Brockington (New York Post), "Voice of a New Generation" (GRAE New York), "Next Great Pop Diva" by Ian Drew (Us Weekly Magazine). She is also known as "Standing-Ovation Queen" and "Queen of the Goose Bumps," while I have also called her "Princess of Song." I consider myself a Chaster; we Chasters (Charice´s fans) have been very happy with all those accolades. We failed to realize, however, that except the last epithet, none of the above captures the uniqueness of Charice as a singer - in fact, she is more than a singer. The most astute observation about Charice came from some fans in Miami, Florida, who called Charice "The Best Live Performer of Her Generation" (as reported by hoIyweIIs in YouTube Charice). That´s exactly what she is; that´s exactly what sets her apart from all the others. This is what she should take advantage of. That is why she is doing all those radio tours, mall tours, concert tours. Give her time and she will conquer not only the little & big singing stages but the whole civilized world.

Dream the impossible dream. Go Charice! I wish you love.

And you know what? I believe that those 18 uniquely crafted lessons exactly apply to creative singers and mostly apply to creative writers if they want to be extremely successful.

In that case, all I have to do is to succeed in finding myself a fairy godmother.