20 years with Constant Change

We’re on the road

We move from place to place

And oftentimes when I’m about to call it home

We’d have to move along

Life is a constant change.

The friends we know, we meet along the way

Too soon the times we share form part of yesterday

‘Cause life’s a constant change

And nothing stays the same, oh no.

Clouds that move across the skies

Are changing form before our very eyes

Why couldn’t we keep time from movin’ on?

Hold on to all the years before this moment’s gone?

Why must we live the days at such a frightening pace?

We’re all clouds that move across the skies

And changing form before our very eyes

Have we outgrown our Peter Pans and wings?

We’ve simply grown too old for tales of knights and kings

‘Cause life’s a constant change

And nothing stays the same, oh no.

So many things have changed and have happened since 1989 when Jose Mari Chan wrote Constant Change. Between 1989 and 2009, Joe Mari lost his father, Tony Chan, and gained a few grandchildren whom he and his wife, Maryann Ansaldo, dote on as most grandparents do.

Even music trends have changed considerably. Life’s a constant change, you know. But the love for mellow songs like those for which Joe Mari and other balladeers are noted have remained constant, have stayed the same.

“I was on my 22nd year as a recording artist when Universal Records released that album,” said Joe Mari.

It’s the album that produced such megahits as Beautiful Girl; Please Be Careful With My Heart; My Girl, My Woman, My Friend; Can’t We Start Over Again; the title track Constant Change; and I Have Fallen In Love With The Same Woman Three Times, the poem written by Ninoy Aquino for his wife, Pres. Cory Aquino, that Joe Mari had set into music and, ironically, became a hit only after Tita Cory died last Aug. 1. (These songs are among the 20 tracks on Romance Revisited, Christian Bautista’s album-tribute to Joe Mari, also released by Universal Records.)

“The way it looks,” mused Joe Mari, “I Have Fallen in Love the poem and the song will never die.”

The songs from the album introduced Joe Mari to wider audiences in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea, Japan and Hong Kong, with cover versions recorded by other Asian artists like Aaron Kwok, Sally Yee, Tomomi Akimoto, Sandy Lam and Yasuo T.

“I wrote Constant Change while making the transition from living in New York back to Manila,” recalled Joe Mari. “I was on a plane looking at the clouds pass swiftly by, changing form faster than the wink of an eye. The song reflects the ‘frightening pace at which we live our days’ — you know, constantly changing ‘like clouds that move across the skies,’ reminding us to maintain our sense of childlike wonder and simplicity before we ‘grow too old for tales of knights’ and ‘losing our Peter Pan and wings.’ Throughout the ‘90s, many high-school classes adopted Constant Change as graduation theme song.”

Constant Change was the first album ever to be given a Diamond Record Award for selling 10-times “platinum” (a “platinum” then equalled 40,000 copies sold; but today, no thanks to piracy, the number has been reduced to 20,000). Since then, according to UR lady boss Kathleen Dy-Go, it has sold more than 800,000 copies — and counting! — and overtaken only by another Joe Mari album, Christmas In Our Hearts, which reigns as the country’s biggest-selling album of all time with a double-Diamond status and also still counting!

“Up to now, Sing Me Your Song Again, Daddy, one of the songs on the Constant Change album, is played during wedding receptions as young brides dance with their fathers,” said Joe Mari.

Can’t We Start Over Again is a haunting song about forgiveness and reconciliation; while Please Be Careful With My Heart was recorded first as a solo piece by Jam Morales in the early ‘80s and then for the Constant Change album, Joe Mari turned it into a love duet with a bright young singer named Regine Velasquez. That song essentially helped catapult Regine, now a super-singer, to stardom.

“The song’s simple message is this: A man wants to be a woman’s first love while a woman wants to be a man’s last love.”

But by far the biggest hit from the album is Beautiful Girl which inspired the Seiko movie of the same title, starring Gretchen Barretto.

“It’s about a pretty girl I saw from a distance but never got to meet,” said Joe Mari who wrote in his songbook Words and Music: She was like a fragment of a lovely melody that comes to a songwriter in the dark of night, only to lose it at the break of day.

Remember what a wise man once said? To be immortal, do any or all of the following: Plant a tree, sire a child or write a book.

To that, Joe Mari added: Write a song.

And what beautiful songs he has written!

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