Ellen Degeneres Show Features Arnel Pineda with Journey

Ellen Degeneres Impressed by Journey After Journey sang its classic hit Separate Ways on their TV debut on 28 May 2008 on The Ellen Degeneres show, the audience swept to its feet, and Ellen Degeneres seemed to be at a loss for words and could only exclaim to the band, “C’mon! Unbelievable! Unbelievable! C’mon!” And then she proceeded to embrace each Journey member.

Ellen Degeneres must also be remembered for mentioning Arnel Pineda prominently on her show on 21 March 2008 as a YouTube Neal Schon discovery and concluded, “Let that be a lesson to you. Don’t stop believing.”

Opportunity is Not a Lengthy Visitor One of my favorite lines from the musical Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim, it magnifies the fact that when opportunity presents itself, one must be ready to leap. The confidence to take that leap will come from the years of preparation and toil, for in the intervening time, one must keep the faith that opportunity will indeed pass our way.

Arnel Pineda Keeps the Faith Wikipedia reports that Arnel Pineda began showing his talent for singing at a young age, which culminated in an appearance on national television. By the time he was a teenager, he joined bands that won contests that allowed him to perform nationally and internationally.

From 1991 to 2005, Arnel Pineda performed with several Pinoy bands in Hong Kong, which demanded sets three times a night six times a week. On his days off, he would still sing for the Filipino community based in Hong Kong.

These experiences honed his voice, his endurance, his singing style, his musicality, in short, Arnel Pineda kept his skills to the fore.

Neal Schon Describes the Ideal Lead Singer for Journey In the band’s website, Journey guitarist Neal Schon described the characteristics he and keyboardist Jonathan Cain were looking for to interpret the songs they had written and composed for the legendary rock band Journey, “I wanted a guy that could convey the classic songs with a similar texture to his voice, and a tenor voice, but someone who puts his own spin on it.”

It is now part of rock and roll lore how Neal Schon was surfing YouTube in search of the elusive Journey frontman and found a clip of Arnel Pineda, who was now based in the Philippines singing with his band Zoo.

Neal Schon couldn’t believe his ears, “After watching the videos over and over again, I had to walk away from the computer and let what I heard sink in because it sounded too good to be true. I thought, ‘he can’t be that good.’ But he is that good, he’s the real deal and so tremendously talented. Arnel doesn’t sound synthetic and he’s not emulating anyone.”

Arnel Pineda is ‘Embraced’ with Open Arms by Journey Journey keyboardist Jonathan Cain enthused, “Arnel brings a soulful and passionate voice to JOURNEY. His personality is very well-suited to our music. With Arnel’s soaring tenor, Journey returns to our heritage sound.”

Schon agreed, “We feel reborn. I think there’s a lot of chemistry between the five of us. At first we were going to go into the studio and just write 4 songs, but now it’s escalated to a lot of great new and diverse material. The stuff sounds tremendous. Everyone’s so stoked about it. We feel very fortunate to have found Arnel.”

The Lesson Keep the faith and let us keep on honing our craft for we must be ready when opportunity comes knocking on our doors. To rephrase Shakespeare, the world’s our stage and we are all players.

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