Arnel Pineda Filipino Singer From Sampaloc

Early life

Arnel Campaner Pineda was born on 5 September 1967 in Manila. His mother encouraged his love of singing from early on, and his parents entered him in many singing contests as a child. As a teenager he left school to work, collecting and selling recyclable materials and taking odd jobs at the pier.

Career

In 1982, at the age of fifteen, Pineda became lead singer of a Filipino group called Ijos. In 1986 several members of Ijos formed the group Amo, which won the Rock Wars contest in the Philippines. In 1988 Amo won the Philippine round of the Yamaha World Band Explosion with a version of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and went to the final in Hong Kong, where it could not win because of a rule technicality. The band opened for Robert Palmer in Manila in 1989, and its only album, Ang Tunay na Amo, came out on BMG in 1990.

That year Pineda and other Amo members formed Intensity Five and entered the Yamaha contest again, with Pineda winning Best Vocalist as the band placed first runner-up. He then led a new band, New Age. After a talent agent saw them play in 1991, they moved to Hong Kong, where they performed six nights a week at an entertainment restaurant called Grammy's for several years.

In 1999 Pineda attracted the interest of the Warner Bros. label and flew back to the Philippines on his days off to record his self-titled solo album, Arnel Pineda. Most of its ten original songs were slow ballads, and he wrote and arranged several of them. "Iiyak Ka Rin" became a karaoke favourite across Asia, while "Sayang" was popular on radio. In 2001 he sang "Looking Glass" on the album The Way We Do by the band South Border.

In 2006 he moved back to the Philippines and formed The Zoo with the guitarist Monet Cajipe, Emil Bondoc on bass, Edgar Mendoza on keyboards and Mckoy Alcantara on drums. The group played several nights a week in clubs in Manila and Olongapo, and its first album, Zoology, was released by MCA Universal in September 2007. It contained twelve original songs and one cover, with Pineda writing five of the tracks and co-writing another.

Videos of The Zoo covering songs by Journey and other bands began appearing on YouTube in February 2007. On 28 June 2007 Journey guitarist Neal Schon asked a friend of Pineda who had uploaded many of them for his contact details, then emailed Pineda to invite him to audition. Pineda first took the message for a hoax. In August he travelled with his manager Bert de Leon to Marin County, north of San Francisco, for a week of auditions. On 5 December 2007 Journey announced him as its new lead singer.

He made his first appearance with the band on 21 February 2008 at the Viña del Mar International Song Festival in Chile, in a concert televised to an audience of around 25 million. Revelation, the band's first album with Pineda, was released on 3 June 2008, debuted at number five on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold, later reaching platinum status. Kevin Shirley produced it. Journey toured Europe and North America in 2008, with Pineda singing in 57 concerts, and then played dates in Japan, the Philippines, China and Hawaii; the concert in Manila was released on DVD. On 1 February 2009 he performed with Journey at the pregame show of Super Bowl XLIII. The band later released the albums Eclipse in 2011 and Freedom in 2022 with him as singer.

Pineda appeared in the 2012 documentary Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey. He has also worked on Philippine television, including as a co-host on ASAP, and has guested on The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The Oprah Winfrey Show with Journey.

Recognition

In 2021 Pineda received the Asia's Most Influential Philippines award.

Personal life

In 2013 Pineda told Rappler that he divides his time between the Philippines and the United States.