The Manila Times€Sweet, hot Coco
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Sweet, hot Coco
By Tessa C. Mauricio
SHE is every bit as charming as she is curvaceous. Every bit as sweet as she
is sexy. Every bit as Asian as she is American. She is Coco Lee, and she had
Manila falling in love with her warm personality and sizzling hot music over
the weekend, breezing into the metro for a one-night only show to promote her
latest album, Exposed.
The Coco Lee appeal begins with an openly happy smile that lights up her
pretty China eyes and everyone else around her. Then, she says her hellos in
that affable American way and makes strangers forget she is actually an
international pop star.
Much like a little girl, she gushes at the sight of multicolored flowers and
beautifully wrapped packages, gifts presented to her by BMG Records Pilipinas
at a press conference in Holiday Inn Galleria. But once she performs, Coco Lee
turns into every little girl’s dream: A goddess on stage whose moves and
music gets the whole world grooving along to her beat.
That’s Coco Lee in a nutshell: A mix of extremes that works. A mix of
extremes that’s real.
Asia’s idol
Coco Lee holds the distinction of being Asia’s first successful crossover
artist to the United States, Europe and Australia. She did what the likes of
Martin Nievera and Gary Valenciano have long wanted to achieve. Nievera has
done well in the Las Vegas live circuit but has yet to cut a record for the
international market.
“Oh, but it wasn’t easy to do,” she assures the local press. “And being
the first to do anything, you open yourself to a lot of criticism and a whole
lot of mistakes too.”
While she picked up the Western flair for R&B from growing up in San Francisco
(her family migrated to the United States soon after she was born), it was
still in Hong Kong where Lee kicked off her singing career.
In 1993 she returned to her motherland to join the prestigious New Talent
Singing Contest where she landed the second place prize. It was this win that
convinced her to stay in Asia to pursue a professional career as a singer.
Signed to Sony, she released Yesterday’s Passion (her Chinese debut), which
launched her to the top of the pop charts.
“In 1999 I decided on doing the crossover because I could see so many
talented singers out here in Asia, and I thought to myself, how come I
don’t see anyone in the international scene?
“That’s when I told Sony I’d like a crack at it, and I’m grateful to them
for having given me the opportunity to take my music further.”
And so with the release of the all-original Just No Other Way album that year,
Lee fulfilled a lifelong dream, expanding her fan base far and wide. From
then on, life—and career—just got better and better.
Coco, exposed
Voted year in and year out as one of the “world’s sexiest women” (FHM,
Esquire, Maxim magazines), Coco Lee still blushes whenever she sees the music
video of “So Good,” one of the cuts of her second all-English album,
Exposed under Sony/BMG. It is after all explosive, with the artist in a
nude-colored bikini in a highly sexual, highly suggestive choreography.
The Asian in her tells her never to show the video to her father.
“We did ‘So Good’ as a way of showing the world that I’m all grown up
from six years ago when my first English album came out,” she explains.
“I wanted the album to talk about love in a sassy way, which is what almost
all the songs are like—there aren’t any sad songs here, just stuff that’s
uplifting.”
She is proud of the fact that the entire album has her heart and soul, as she
puts it, “from the very first song to the very first instrument.”
Apparently, she wasn’t able to participate much in the writing and production
side of Just No Other Way, which featured the hit single “Before I Fall In
Love,” and she wanted to change things for her second outing.
“I just want to look back so many years from now, listen to my albums, and
be able to say, ‘This is me. This is good music,’ and not be embarrassed
of my work.”
And with all 14 cuts in the album, the artist has no regrets “exposing”
Coco Lee.
轉自：
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2005/jun/29/yehey/life/20050629lif2.html
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