A Filipina sings "God Bless America" for Obama

If you're not familiar with the name Charice Pempengco, she's a 16-year old Filipina singer who became an internet sensation in 2008 when someone posted a video on Youtube of her performance in Star King, a Korean talent show. The video got more than 13,000,000 views that it later caught the attention of some big celebrities outside the Philippines. Charice guested on the Ellen De Genere's show, Paul O' Grady Show (London), ABC's Good Morning America, sang a duet with Celine Dion during the latter's concert at Madison Square Garden, guested twice on Oprah, and was one of the performers at David Foster's Tribute Concert in Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas. She has rubbed elbows with other big names in the music indusry such as Josh Groban and Andrea Bocelli to name a few, and has performed infront of famous personalities such as Donald Trump, Denzel Washington, Jay Leno, Gayle King, designers Tommy Hilfiger and Kenneth Cole, and many more.

Charice's latest international exposure to date is probably the biggest performance she will ever have in her life. I'm talking about singing for the U.S. President elect Barack Obama. Yesterday, January 18, 2009, Charice sang "God Bless America" during Obama's pre-inaugural ball at the Grand Hyatt Washington Hotel along with other musicians. This may not be a big deal to the Americans but it kind of makes me wonder why, of all the musicians they can pick, Charice, who is a pure Filipino and  not even a U.S. immigrant was chosen to sing the 2nd National anthem of the USA which some of the lyrics say: God Bless America, land that I love and God Bless America, my home sweet home. While there's nothing wrong with that and everyone can sing whatever song or anthem they want to sing, to me it's like a pure American sings the Philippine National Anthem infront of the Filipinos at the Malacañang Palace on a big national event. Anyways, Charice also sang "One Moment in Time" at the said event.

Congratulations on being chosen Charice! and you make us Filipinos proud.

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