Jose Mari Chan: His every song has a story

Singer-songwriter Jose Mari Chan is responsible for some of the biggest OPM hits in music history. He treats his songs like his children. "Like my children, I want each song to reach its highest potential. They are treated differently. Like your kids, you don’t play favorites so I don’t have any favorite composition. Each is unique. Each has its own story."

Some of the stories behind his well-loved songs are chronicled in his book, Words and Music, Jose Mari Chan Volume Two.

For the monster hit Please Be Careful With My Heart, Joe writes, "It started out as a solo piece which I wrote for Jam Morales in 1982...It became a hit for Jam. But something was urging me to do a male response as if the music muse wanted the song made into a duet. It took four years before the duet version could be performed in public.....and it was a young Lea Salonga who first breathed life into it.... Two years later, following the exact musical arrangement of Louie Ocampo, I recorded it for the Constant Change album with a new artist named Regine Velasquez and thank God, we turned it into a 16-platinum album."

For Beautiful Girl, Joe Mari reveals that, "(Beautiful Girl) is a ballad about seeing an attractive lady from a distance and never getting to meeting her. Losing a girl like a ‘song in the night.’ ... Spending 11 years in the US made me even more appreciative of American country and western songs and their influence on my songwriting is evident in this composition...."

For I Remember the Boy, Jose Mari discloses, "In August of 1979, Mary Ann and I took our children Liza, Jojo and Michael up in Canada during their summer vacation... While waiting one morning for room service to deliver our breakfast, I heard a long lost song on the radio. A simple piece that meant a lot to me and a girlfriend some years back. Music has this unique power of bringing back feelings and memories. The thing is, was while the song did remind me of the girl, somehow the feeling was gone. Thus I wrote the song I Remember the Girl. When I gave it to Joey Albert to record a year later, we naturally changed the ‘girl’ to ‘boy.’"

Diva of divas Mariah Carey, who is also a singer and songwriter like Jose Mari Chan says that each song she makes has a story behind it. "It’s not like if I write a song, nothing was happening inside me. Songwriting is a catharsis and talk to any composer he or she will tell you something profound that has happened to him or her." The same goes for Jose Mari Chan. Each song is a story....each story has a song.

Know more about the stories and the songs in his book, Words and Music Jose Mari Chan Volume Two available in all major bookstores nationwide.

The vocal Direk Joey

When director Joey Reyes talks, everyone listens.

Take for example his take on the country’s political situation. "I’m so disgusted. It’s just too much. We are in a country of blind people. But I still have faith in our country. I know we can go much further and progress as a nation."

On love, the award-winning director says, "You only love a person when you accept him or her not only for what you like but what you don’t like."

On friendship: "Friendship is all about listening and your ability to understand. Patience is the measure of friendship."

Although he doesn’t talk in his latest movie Kung Ako Na Lang Sana, much of his views about friendship, love and the Filipino psyche are in the movie. Starring Aga Muhlach and Sharon Cuneta, Kung Ako Na Lang Sana is the story of a barkada who sticks to one another through the decades.

Kung Ako Na Lang Sana also stars Dominic Ochoa, Jennifer Sevilla, Christine Bersola, Patrick Guzman and Mickey Ferriols. It is released by Star Cinema and will open on Sept. 24. It also has a soundtrack that will be released simultaneously with the movie and features the title song interpreted by Sharon Cuneta. It also contains Through The Years interpreted by Piolo Pascual, It’s All Coming Back To Me Now by Full Circle, Ayoko Na Sana by Michelle Ayalde and many more.