Zsa Zsa: Marriage is no longer a priority

MANILA, Philippines - When it comes to love, Zsa Zsa Padilla has been there, done that. Six years after waiting for her marriage annulment case in Parañaque to prosper and years after her wedding with Dolphy went pfft, Zsa Zsa just shrugs when asked about marriage.

“It’s not my priority anymore,” she shoots back.

Gone is the down-and-out feeling after her wedding to Dolphy fizzled out. Everything was set — her wedding gown, the invitations, etc. All she and Dolphy needed to do then was send out the invitations.

“Good thing we didn’t send them out,” Zsa Zsa looks back.

Good thing, too, youngest daughter Zia, now 18, comforted her distraught mom. 

“It was Zia who opened my eyes,” relates Zsa Zsa. “She told me people get married to make a fresh start: Seal a relationship, have a family. I did the reverse. I already have kids (three to be exact: Karylle, Nicole and Zia).”

And so, Zsa Zsa — and Dolphy — has nothing more to prove. So why worry about getting married?

What matters most is what she and Dolphy have in their hearts. And it’s been there for more than two decades, long enough to be as permanent as indelible ink.

Zsa Zsa has a term for it: Unchanging love. Dolphy, so wrote Zsa Zsa in her latest album and debut CD for PolyEast Philippines, is “what unchanging love is all about.”

“You continue to inspire me with the unconditional love that only you can give,” she wrote of Dolphy in her album sleeve.

And so Unchanging Love is not only the title of her comeback album. It’s also one of the tracks in the album, and indicates how much she values her 26-year-old singing career.

She’s been around for so long, Zsa Zsa jokes, the new writers in the recent album launch must be more familiar with her daughter Karylle than they with her (Zsa Zsa’s) songs. New composers, new technicians, new everything have emerged.

“I learned my lesson,” Zsa Zsa says about her long absence in the recording scene. “I didn’t know my Viva (recording) contract bound me for five years.”

So she’s making up for lost time. She’s packing in the revivals in the Unchanging Love two-CD special edition. It’s the in thing these days. So you hear remakes like Memories (Joey Albert), Nais Ko (Miguel Vera), Nasasaktan (Reuben Laurente), Muli (Vina Morales), Changes (Carla Martinez), Ikaw Lang (Chad Borja) and Kung Alam Mo Lang (Joanne Lorenzana).

Yes, Unchanging Love may be an album of revivals. But that doesn’t mean Zsa Zsa has forgotten her OPM roots. After all, it was good old OPM numbes, like Mambobola, Hiram and Ikaw Lamang that made Zsa Zsa a household name back in the mid-‘80s.

So she threw in three new OPM ballads, Iibigin Kita Muli, Kung and Pagmamahal na Walang Wakas in her new album’s playlist.

Next time around though, she promises to return to OPM mode. And that means her next album will be as OPM as can be.

This much, she owes herself — and her fans.