DON'T STOP BELIEVING ON YOURSELF: JOURNEY OF ARNEL PINEDA

The amazing true to life story of how unknown Filipino lead singer Arnel Pineda was discovered in Youtube and eventually recruited to join the legendary rock band Journey is an inspiring and awesome tale that demonstrates the value of dedication, hard work, and determination in the pursuit of one's goals in life.

Before Journey, Arnel Pineda was already a professional lead singer of bands performing in various clubs around the Philippines and HongKong. Prior to his being discovered by Neil Schon, lead guitarist of Journey, Arnel was the lead singer in a Philippine performance band named Zoo whose main club acts were cover interpretations of classic Top 40 songs of popular artists.

Listening closely to the performance of the original Journey with Steve Perry and the new Journey with Arnel Pineda, the vocal resemblance is strikingly identical marked with unique particularities. It can be validly said that these personal performances of Steve Perry can never be duplicated since the original songs were interpreted by Steve according to the message it was written with. Steve Perry was an active contributor as he co-wrote some of Journey's legendary hits along with keyboardist Jonathan Cain and guitarist Neil Schon.

The thing so impressive about Arnel is how he interprets and give new life to some of Journey's most classic songs. Arnel like Steve passionately sings with a lot of moving emotion and infuse new life to these immortal songs for relevant appreciation of today's generation. His soulful and emotion-filled rendition of Journey's classics are equally as good that of Steve, that Journey is willing to take their chances on Arnel in their second journey to fame and popularity towards a new set of younger audiences. 

Journey's most recent release Revelations include classic and new materials as interpreted by Arnel Pineda was released in June 2008 and has sold more than 104,000 copies in its debut week and accomplished a peak position of 5th in Billboard's Top 200.

Arnel relates that as a child his singing talent was inspired and further developed by his mother who had always believed in his ability and encouraged him to sing during their mother-son bonding moments while crooning to their favorite songs on the radio. His initial public exposures started out by joining singing contests prodded and encouraged by both parents to further enhance Arnel's natural gift of singing.

Those good parental genes and constant attentive rearing has finally paid off, as Arnel Pineda now proudly belongs to the new generation of Filipino talents that are proving to be of world-class entertainment level. He is living proof that if you don't stop believing on yourself, the world will eventually discover what you are exceptionally made of. So continue to hold on to your dreams, faithfully!


EDWIN L. YAP
Makati City, Philippines