Life-changing accident inspires Lance’s #YATO music video

It was bound to happen. As he looks back at that life-changing accident at a gym four years ago, Lance Raymundo said that, as the saying goes, nothing happens by chance, that everything happens for a reason.

“It’s destiny,” claimed Lance who used that tragedy as backdrop for the music video of You Are The One (#YATO), the rearranged (thus much-improved) version of a song he composed back then and whose message is eternally relevant.

“You know, I could be just at home at that time and not in a gym and I could have fallen from the stairs or whatever. It was destiny that something tragic would happen.”           

In the music video also featuring Janna Victoria as his girlfriend, Lance is shown singing with moving visuals as backdrop, referring to that 2014 accident, including a hospital scene showing his face covered with bandage until towards the end when he is shown walking away with his back to the camera, with Janna still caring and loving him no matter and despite what happened.        

“I purposely didn’t show my face without the bandage para may mystery,” explained Lance who described the music video as biographical, his first single as a Viva artist. “It’s an open-ended closing scene with Janna shedding tears of joy.”                      

Lance revealed that he originally wrote the song for his then girlfriend (now married to somebody else), a harana (serenade) to a beloved, and he decided to remake it because the lyrics are timeless, as relevant now as they were then.

Looking at Lance now with his reconstructed visage, nobody would believe that his face was crashed almost beyond recognition by barbells that fell on him as he was about to start working out.

“My whole face was disfigured,” Lance recounted as if it happened only yesterday. “Hindi mo talaga ako makikilala. I lost my equilibrium and my vision in one eye. The prognosis was very bad. My doctor didn’t give any assurance kung maibabalik ang dating mukha ko o makakalakad pa ako. There was a possibility that I would be wheelchair-bound all my life.”

Faith can move mountains and, as the poet said, more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of, Lance was convinced that God is good and wouldn’t leave him in misery — not for long, anyway.  

Lance with parents Nilo and Nina, and brother Rannie with wife Chary and daughters Regina and Marga                                                                         

“I recovered very fast,” he said. “After seven days, I started recovering. My vision was back to 20/20 and, as you can see,” he added with a smile, “I look even better now, mas naging guapo.”

Asked if he didn’t develop a phobia for working out in the gym (the Raymundos didn’t file any charges against the gym management and simply charged it to experience), Lance said, “No, I did not. The accident improved my outlook in life. I feel rejuvenated. I feel more confident with myself and with my music. It taught me not to let anything untoward derail my life. I am happy and contented with my life.”                                                            

Since he signed up with Viva, Lance has appeared in FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano for one month as the son of Eddie Garcia (“Until Tito Eddie’s character died,” Lance clarified) and in the Kapamilya soap Since I Found You as Doc Gilbert who patched things up between Piolo Pascual and Arci Muñoz’s characters. His last TV work before those was in the Kapamilya drama Pieta as the arch enemy of Ryan Agoncillo. After #YATO, Lance will put out three more singles, one every three months, before he starts working on an album.

“I really want to do more acting,” said Lance who has done 35 indies in seven years, including Panahon Na in which he stars with Irma Adlawan in a May-December romance.

“Irma was my first kiss,” shared Lance, “screen kiss.” He didn’t say how many kisses he has done off screen.

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