YouTube gives Filipino singers the big "cyber break"

MANILA (Reuters Life!) - Sometimes the road to international stardom starts with a click on YouTube.

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.

DeGeneres interviewed Pempengco on her show in December, where she wowed the audience with her vocal range, while Foster now introduces her to his friends as "my new singer," after the two met in Los Angeles.

"After I sang at the show last year, Ellen embraced me and she kept telling me this is the start of my international career," Pempengco told Reuters in Manila last week.

The busy teen now studies for her high school degree from home, while clips of her singing Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Beyonce and Celine Dion's hits circulate in cyberspace.

After more than five million hits on YouTube, she is still surprised to be recognized in the street.

"While I was walking along Rodeo Drive, people would come up to me to congratulate me and say 'I saw you on YouTube and you are a great singer'," said Pempengco in her dressing room after doing a Whitney Houston medley for a local noontime TV show.

"One American told me 'I am now a Pinoy after hearing you sing'." Pinoy is a colloquial term for Filipino.

"I really did not expect that I'd get noticed on the internet," she said.

LIKE A DREAM

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.

The band flew Pineda to Marin County in San Francisco in August for an audition.

"Unbelievably, they embraced my voice," said Pineda.

"They said this guy is genuine and I really got the gig.

Now he will join the band for a series of concerts in Europe, U.S. and South America, kicking off in Chile.

"It's like I am dreaming," Pineda said.

"Except that I am awake".

(Reporting by Karen Lema, editing by Gillian Murdoch)