Billy Joe Crawford (born May 16, 1982) is a Filipino-American recording artist, singer-songwriter and philanthropist.
Crawford is a Bilingual Filipino Singer. His second language is English and he is conversational in French. Crawford not only lived in New York City, USA, but also in Paris for five years and for one year in London. He currently resides in Los Angeles as of 2007. In 2008, he went to Manila to host Pinoy Dream Academy's uberture. He has also hosted the prestigious Miss Earth 2008 held in the Philippines.
He is now a talent of ABS-CBN and was seen in Pilipinas Got Talent as one of the two main hosts together with Luis Manzano.
Billy Crawford was born in Manila, Philippines, to a Filipina mother named Mayette and an American father named Jack. He has two half-brothers. Crawford was discovered at an early age of 3 years, singing at a bowling alley that his mother visited often. He became a series regular on an afternoon GMA Network television show called That's Entertainment under the name Billy Joe. He attended International Christian Academy in the Philippines until his departure for the US when he was 11 and balanced both his professional acting and academic repertory obligations. He acted in a few movies before he moved to the United States where he started a music career, performing mostly in the United Kingdom and France, as well as in Asia. His pre-career started in Dallas, Texas, USA, where he lived and performed his singing and then moved to New York City. During this time, he legally changed his name to Billy Crawford. He first went to Professional Children's School and then to Professional Performing Arts School in New York City with many other famous professional children, such as Lee Thompson Young, Mandy Moore and Nina Sky. In 1996, he danced with Michael Jackson onstage when he was 14 years old as one of Michael's back-up dancers at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards.
Crawford did not receive significant media attention after the Big City Tour 2005, mostly being mentioned in a few magazines for his break-up with Lorie, and began a new relationship with Marie Courchinoux (also known as Maryss from Paris) There is a recent interviews of Maryss that she was married to Billy Crawford for 5yrs and half and they got officially divorced last June 2010, a French dancer and member of the Beat Freaks whom he met when she auditioned for the Big City tour. Crawford also dated Mandy Moore for almost a year. Billy is in a relationship with Nikki Gil, a local Filipino artist. They met while they hosted the second season of Pinoy Dream Academy (PDA). He is also close friends with the The Black Eyed Peas, Justin Timberlake as well as *NSYNC, and Matt Pokora a popular French singer.
Amidst his blooming career in the international music scene, most especially in Europe, he decided to reside in the Philippines. His stay in the Philippines for his Move TV show gave Billy friendly connections with many other Filipino actors and singers such as Gary Valenciano, as well as with many other famous actors and singers.
Crawford completed in 2008 his studio engineering course at New York University in New York, United States, and he will plan on getting the diploma.
