Zsa Zsa Padilla: With a song in her heart

Songs have always defined Zsa Zsa Padilla. Happy, sad, nostalgic, fiery, they have been with her since she was a little girl, listening to her mother’s favorite Spanish songs or her father’s Perry Como ditties.

Her first crush was the late Andy Gibb, and she grew up listening to easy-listening songs of the Carpenters.

In-between breaks on a TV sitcom she is doing, Zsa Zsa would hum tunes to keep herself from lapsing into boredom. When she’s depressed, she chases the blues away by crooning her favorite feel-good song, Say A Little Prayer. And things look right once more.

Her choice of songs reflect the essential Zsa Zsa Padilla. She avoids what she calls "victim songs" like the plague. Songs that leave the singer with nothing but feelings of self-pity, and worst, loathing.

For Zsa Zsa is a fighter. She fought, and won, a long-drawn battle with scoliosis, and even bore home partner Dolphy a healthy daughter (by Caesarian section) when the doctor said she would be risking her life in the process.

She fought her fears when Dolphy lay sick in the hospital, fighting for his life. She braved brickbats thrown at her when she split up with dentist-husband Modesto Tatlonghari (father of her teenaged daughter Karylle, who has proven she has her mom’s singing prowess).

"There was a time I can’t sing Hiram (a song on forbidden love which she popularized years ago)," Zsa Zsa talks about that closed chapter in her life.

And, some four years ago, she fought the effects of a painkiller that made her want to take her life – get into a boat and jump into the cold, deadly waters below.

"It was after we shot Tatay Nick (RVQ Productions’ spoof on the hugely-successful Titanic)," Zsa Zsa recalls. She had just gone under the knife because of a cyst and she had to take a painkiller to deaden the powerful sensation bothering her and the deep depression it has caused.

But when she realized the drug was robbing her of reason to live, Zsa Zsa threw it away, pronto.

To this day, she tries to bear any physical pain rather than take a painkiller and relive that nightmare all over again.

The feisty I Will Survive could very well be the song of her life. But Zsa Zsa would rather choose Kahit Na, the song about continuing to love, against all odds, that has become her signature tune.

Make her choose a song that she wants played as she mounts the stage to receive a trophy or any kind of honor, and it would be this stirring ballad, hands down.

Even if she has crossed over from singer to actress (with awards to her name to prove it) and TV host (of the ABS-CBN Sunday noontime show ASAP), it is the music Zsa Zsa wants to be remembered for.

This is why she has decided to put a stop to villain roles, the kind that makes children like her little daughter think she is the incarnation of the wicked witch herself.

"My records did not move in the shelves when I played that villain role in Hiwaga sa Balete Drive," Zsa Zsa explains. Even her own daughter didn’t like that meanie role her mom played in the movie, never mind if she happened to be a ghost.

Zsa Zsa felt it whenever she went on a nationwide provincial tour. The children would not run and come to her.

So she put her foot down: "I won’t compromise my singing by taking a villain role again. And that’s that, until people learn to accept that it’s all a role and not in any way linked to my being a singer."

The lady has her priorities down pat, and no way will she change it for anything in this world.

After all, you can’t just erase almost two decades of singing with a snap of a finger.

And so, Zsa Zsa is guarding that voice with the ferocity of a lioness protecting her treasured cubs. When she met a couple of press people for In My Life… Zsa Zsa, her nth concert at the Captain’s Bar of Mandarin Oriental Manila on June 1 and 2, 9:30 p.m., she was always reaching out for her thermos filled with warm cough syrup (you can see the smoke coming out of the container) and some herbal medication. She doesn’t want to leave anything to chance, although slipups do happen, even to the best of the lot.

"I will sing tunes that have defined my life – all 37 years of it (she marks her birthday on May 28). This is why there will be videos of my family," she says.

She looks around and muses, "Maybe it would be nice to show that video of me as a 10-year-old girl in that Nido commercial."

The repertoire will consist of Broadway songs, and three or four unfamiliar tunes she thinks the well-heeled hotel crowd – a group far removed from the formula-song-loving masa crowd – will not be averse listening to.

And so does Zsa Zsa Padilla’s love affair with music move on, just like the singer who’d fight every battle of her colorful life with an instant burst of song that would feed her soul and lift her spirits no end.