Julia Fordham —DMC Facebook
Singer Julia Fordham performed for an appreciative audience in a post-Valentine concert held last Friday in Parañaque City. Like she promised us in an earlier interview, she sang all the songs her Filipino fans have grown up listening to—and attempting to sing-along to—for the past four decades.
Fordham has a deep voice that gives an air of gravitas to her songs that often deal with love lost and found. She can also reach the high notes, although this time around, she struggled somewhat. Not that it mattered to the mostly female audience that filled The Theatre at Solaire.
The singer opened with the title track from her 1994 album “Falling Forward,” followed by “Girlfriend” and “Your Lovely Face” both from arguably her best album, “Porcelain” (1989).
Latecomers
Fordham herself admitted that “Porcelain” managed to bottle the sound she and her team had been aiming for in her self-titled debut album released the year before in 1988. Before the night was over, she would end up singing three more songs from “Porcelain,” including the title track, “Genius” and “Towerblock.”
In a bid to break the ice, Fordham joked several times about the traffic situation “in this crazy old town,” even surmising that the latecomers who trickled into her concert venue must have been caught in traffic jams after the Coldplay concert staged at the Philippine Arena a month ago.
“Don’t worry. If you miss ‘Girlfriend,’ ‘Porcelain’ or ‘Invisible War,’ I’ll sing them all again,” she joked.
Fordham also shared a few anecdotes. She said she wrote the song “I Want to Stay Home with You” when her daughter Marley Rose was still a baby. “Now that she’s an adult, I’m hoping she moves out so I can finally get my life back,” she said.
Her deadpan, British humor might not have translated, but Fordham is actually close to her daughter and is unafraid to show it. “My daughter is so ALIVE. Gorgeous, too,” she commented on one of Marley’s posts.
The singer announced that she had just finished five new songs with her longtime collaborator, but quickly added she wouldn’t be performing any of them.
“I know how Filipinos are, they only want the old songs—those they’re familiar with.”
Unrequited love
When the opening strains of “Towerblock” began playing, the audience lapped it up. The track is a favorite of Filipinos and likens unrequited love to being one’s own “towerblock to lean on.”
“This song really wasn’t part of my set list, but I asked on Instagram what songs you wanted me to sing, and this was one of them,” she said.
Fordham was then joined onstage by singer Christian Bautista, who ably held his own. They dueted on his track, “Invincible,” before he sang “The Way You Look at Me” and Jose Mari Chan’s “Beautiful Girl.” Fordham then joined him again onstage to duet on “Where Does the Time Go” from her debut album.
I like that she included the title track from her 2002 album “Concrete Love” and the rather obscure “Stay” from her 1997 album “East West.” Both were unexpected and quite refreshing. All in all a great way to celebrate Valentine’s weekend. INQ