Jim Paredes: "A Charice story - edited"

I just discovered this article by distinguished Filipino musician Jim Paredes and instead of simply posting the article link under 2010, I thought of reposting it here.

Why? It's a testimony to Charice's extraordinary talent and and a glimpse into the "forces" that she had to fight against even at such a young age.

From Ten Thousand Things by Jim Paredes on Tumblr:

A Charice story—edited
Posted on July 21, 2010

Was saving this for an article in the future. You might say, this was one of my many encounters with greatness.

Many years ago, I was asked to judge a children’s singing contest. A girl named Charice was one of the contestants. She was one of the bigger kids in the batch. Nevertheless, I was floored when she sang Whitney Houston’s ‘I wanna dance with somebody.’ In my eyes, she clearly bested all the rest by a mile. As a judge, I put her on top, of course.

When the final tallying was about to be done, someone connected with the contest came up to us (the judges) and asked if we were sure of our scores. We said we were. The guy then proceeded to say that Charice was not a ‘new talent’ anymore and had in fact come out in other contests already and he then subtly asked if would we want to review our choices.

I said no.

She won that round because we stuck to our guns. But at the grand finals, someone else took the big prize.

Sometimes true talent can stare at us in the face and we don’t see it. It has to take foreigners to praise them before we give notice.

That’s showbiz.

Addendum:

I didn’t expect this much reaction. A few thoughts:

Some people have commented or suggested that there was or may have been hanky-panky based on what I wrote above. For the record, I make no accusations of any manipulation or any wrong-doing especially in the final judging. I was not there. I did not even see it on TV. That night I judged was the only time I saw Charice live ever. Even on the night that I judged, we were in fact free to exercise our choice and we did despite the input given to us (which I was not comfortable with).

It’s possible that she could have had an off night on the finals and thus someone else was more deserving. I don’t know.

The reaction he referred to were the re-blogs and the comments. As Tim Cruz, the Louder music video director said, "Charice told me her fans were passionate".

Watch what impressed Jim Paredes (judges' panel, right) and how his delight showed on his face.


Alternative upload: http://youtu.be/R2c0sUMhzMA