Charmaine Clarice Relucio Pempengco (born May 10, 1992), popularly known by the mononym Charice, is a Filipino recording artist and actress who rose to popularity through YouTube. Dubbed by Oprah Winfrey as the Most Talented Girl in the World,she released her first international studio album Charice in 2010. The album entered the Billboard 200 at number-eight, making Charice the first Asian singer in history to land in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart.
She released the single "Pyramid" which featured singer Iyaz. It became her most successful single to-date, charting within the top 40 in a number of countries, and debuting on The Oprah Winfrey Show where she sang live vocals. Crossing over to acting on television, she joined the cast of TV series Glee as Sunshine Corazon. She has released a new lead single, "Before It Explodes", written by Bruno Mars, from her international sophomore studio album, Infinity.
Pempengco was born in Laguna, Philippines. After barely escaping her violent father, Charice was raised by her single mother, Raquel. To help support her family she began to enter singing contests at age seven, from town fiestas in various provinces to singing competitions on TV. She is said to have competed in almost a hundred such contests.
In 2005 Charice joined Little Big Star, a talent show in the Philippines loosely patterned after American Idol. Eliminated after her first performance, she was called back as a wildcard contender and eventually became one of the finalists. Although she was a consistent top scorer in the final rounds, she did not win the title in the finale and only placed third.
Charice made minor appearances on local television shows and commercials, but essentially fell off the radar after her stint at Little Big Star. It was not until 2007 that she gained worldwide recognition after an avid supporter under the username FalseVoice, started posting a series of her performance videos on YouTube. These videos received over 15 million hits.
It was announced that she began to record new material for her upcoming sophomore international album. "Before It Explodes", her comeback single, written by Bruno Mars, was released on April 18, 2011. The following day after its release, another song, titled "One Day", was released on iTunes which was co-written and co-produced by Nick Jonas."Louder", the second single was released on May 20 which was bundled with another song, "Lost The Best Thing". On September 14, 2011, it was revealed in a Japanese broadcast that she will be singing the theme song to the video game Final Fantasy XIII-2, titled "New World".
Her second studio album, Infinity, was released exclusively in Japan on October 5, 2011.
Check out Charice's latest music video below.
