Write a Review
Critic's Review
David Gonzales, All Music Guide
I'd to Teach the World to Sing collects 16 songs recorded by Lea Salonga, one of the Philippines' most renowned talents, as a youngster in the early '80s. According to the album notes, the songs were first recorded for FGS & Associates. The songs were reissued for this 1997 collection by BMG Records Philippines. There is also one new performance, the love song "Ngayon Pa Lang Tagumpay Ka Na" (Today You Are Already a Winner), a duet that Lea Salonga sings with another local female recording artist signed to BMG Records Philippines, Cris Villonco. Of the album's 16 songs, 15 consist of western repertoire and include renditions of such standards as "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," "When You Wish Upon a Star," and the hit from the musical Annie, "Tomorrow." She also performs some children's songs, including "Alphabet Song" and "Happiness," and some pop songs, including ABBA's "Chiquitita." She approaches Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love of All" with much sincerity and passion. She showed talent as a youngster, although she wasn't precocious, as is the young British classical singer Charlotte Church. It is to Lea Salonga's credit that she blossomed into a Broadway star in the musical Miss Saigon.
