Charice Pempengco

Charmaine Clarice Relucio Pempengco (born May 10, 1992), popularly known by the mononym Charice, is a Filipina singer 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 solo 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 is 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. Her latest single "Louder" was written by Andy Thi Hy in 2011. In March 2012, she signed on to be one of the four judges of the Philippine version of The X Factor, which began to air on ABS-CBN in June. --- Charice was born in the province of Laguna, Philippines and was raised by her single mother, Racquel. 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, Dave Dueñas, under the username FalseVoice, started posting a series of her performance videos on YouTube. These videos received over 15 million hits making her an internet sensation. --- In June 2007, Ten Songs/Productions, a music publishing company in Sweden, invited Charice to a demo-recording after producers saw her videos. She recorded seven songs – six covers and an original song called "Amazing". She was then invited to the South Korean talent show Star King on its October 13, 2007 edition, she sang "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" and a duet of "A Whole New World" with Kyuhyun, from Super Junior. After watching her Star King performance on YouTube, Ellen DeGeneres extended an on-air invitation to Pempengco to be a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. She flew to the United States for the first time and performed two songs on the December 19, 2007 episode of the show – "I Will Always Love You" and "And I Am Telling You". Following her American debut on Ellen, she made a second appearance on Star King as the "Most Requested Foreign Act" of the show. On its December 28 edition, she performed Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and sang a duet with singer Lena Park. --- On June 2, 2013, Charice confirmed that she is a lesbian during an interview with Boy Abunda at The Buzz in the Philippines. She also mentioned that she had past relationships with other girls in the industry.