How COVID-19 scare became productive for Ogie

Ogie Alcasid

While Ogie Alcasid, the singer, has been terribly missing being in front of a live audience, Ogie Alcasid, the songwriter, has been thriving, creating new material that hopes to uplift weary souls in these troubling times. And interestingly enough, one of his most productive moments happened in self-quarantine, after a COVID-19 scare last July. The seasoned artist had false positive results with antigen tests, then tested negative with the more accurate swab test.

“I was alone for a couple of days, so I was writing. One is called ‘Panginoon Ikaw Lamang.’ It was a crazy episode, but something came out of it. Maybe it was just God wanting me to be with him alone,” he said in a video conference.

Praise and worship are the overarching themes of Ogie’s work in the past couple of months. The ballad “Beautiful,” which Ogie released last month under Star Music, is a collaboration with Moira dela Torre. He started working on it as early as December last year, but it wasn’t until the lockdown that he finally finished it.

“This pandemic has been the backdrop of this entire song … And it got bigger, I felt I had to get it done and release it,” he said.

Aside from “Panginoon” and “Beautiful,” another new composition he has put out recently is “Live for Jesus,” which features his wife, Regine Velasquez, Jaya and her husband, Gary Gotidoc. “I hope the song inspires us to keep believing that despite the crisis, we will survive this,” Ogie said.

Whenever he browses his phone’s photo gallery and sees all the photos of him doing different projects, Ogie couldn’t help but think how hectic his schedule was prior to the pandemic. “It was crazy … I was flying from one country to another, singing and doing all sorts of things,” he said.

But while the 53-year-old artist can’t do any of those right now, he would still like to believe that he has been spending his time productively—just in a different way.

“I have been washing the dishes, doing the laundry. We didn’t have house help during the first months of the lockdown, so we did all the work,” related Ogie.

On top of the fundraising concerts he takes part in, Ogie also holds online shows like “Mondays with Kuya O” and “OPM Night.”

This has been more or less the norm for most artists these days. And they will have to get used to it, Ogie pointed out. “I don’t see live performances coming back in the near future … The thing we’re doing now will be part of our lives for quite some time.” INQ