Hopefully by now, you must have read or heard about the latest buzz on the Internet, that is, the amateur video uploaded on YouTube of a young girl singing at one of the videoke machines at SM Megamall.  The song she was performing was “And I Am Telling You“, one of the most vocally-challenging songs ever written.

The guy who filmed her, a passerby named Yuan Juan, was so amazed by her singing prowess that he immediately uploaded the video on YouTube.  At that time he did not know her name and called her “Random Girl“.

 

Eventually, the YouTube video was picked up by Yahoo Philippines which led people to share it on Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites.  Sharers and admirers included famous personalities like Vhong Navarro, Regine Velasquez., Tim Yap, etc who were floored by the vocal calisthenics of the “Random girl” who by now was identified as Zendee Rose Tenerefe, of General Santos City.

By around that time, ABS-CBN, GMA and TV 5 have featured her on their primetime news programs leading more and more people to log on to YouTube to watch the video.  As of this writing, the Random Girl YouTube video has already gained more than 1,300,000 hits!

Zendee Rose Tenerife is actually a veteran of singing contests here in her hometown, GenSan.  In 2007, she won as the GenSan Pop Idol and a  year later,  as the Soccsksargen Pop Idol.

Even while studying as a scholar at the STI College, she has performed in various local city events, festivals, fiestas, conventions, pageants, barangay programs which further honed her talents in singing and dancing.

She almost gave up inspite this because she seemed to have no luck at the bigger competitions and reality search programs like Pinoy Dream Academy, Pilipinas Got Talent and just very recently, the X-Factor.

She was intent on staying in Manila for some time until after she could prove that she can really make it as a singer, since she has already finished her college education last March 2012.  But then again, her fate courtesy of YouTube changed….

This morning, Zendee flew back home courtesy of GMA’s  Jessica Soho who is featuring her in her program.

While here, she paid a courtesy call on GenSan City Mayor Darlene Antonino Custodio.  During the short visit, she was able to reveal to the mayor the story behind the video and how, to her surprise, (after she found out about it a week later), it has gained over a million hits in less than two weeks’ time.

The mayor was also pleased and proud of Zendee since the latter used to provide the entertainment numbers during her campaign sorties at the last election and was a major winner in a talent competition sponsored by the city.

Zendee’s story will be featured this Saturday at Jessica Soho Presents and will be performing live at Master Showman later that evening.  On Sunday, she will also get to guest and be presented at anothe GMA program, Party Pilipinas.

With all these, the very talented Random Girl has finally gotten what she deserved all along – the recognition as one of GenSan’s future superstars and hopefully that of the country!

Congratulations dear Zendee and here’s to another million hits on YouTube!  Champion ka na rin talaga!

(To get to know more about her, read GandaEverSoMuch’s interview on her by CLICKING THIS.)