Which was what made such a surprise out of an otherwise-nondescript Monday evening during the summer of 2017. Amidst the usual slew of Farmville 2.0 invites and Game of Thrones reactions from co-workers, I, one no-name contributing writer out of many, from one lifestyle rag out of many, received a reply from LeAnna's Facebook account.
“Three interviews. No handlers. You can publish anywhere you like, but only after they’re all done, and only if I see everything first. Non-disclosure until after the story’s out. Deal?”
It was all I could do, after wiping the worst of the coffee-and-spit stains from my monitor while waiting to see if she’d follow up with some version of ‘wrong send’ (she didn’t), to type back a strangled, “Deal.”
May 2017
“I COULD’VE BEEN anyone, you know,” LeAnna chuckles. It’s the pleasantness of a consummate professional, someone who knows she can’t really ‘turn it off’ anymore – the fact that we’re holding this interview in a recording studio is a testament to how hard she works – but still a surprising far cry from her businesslike demeanor online. “That’s what all the critics forget. I didn’t have to look like this. I could have had longer hair. I could have been morena.”
Then, after a beat that lasted exactly one and a half seconds, “I could have been a man.” Another perfectly-timed chuckle.
She has sent me the standard press packet, but it’s still an experience to hear her recount her story in person. The way she shifts between machine-perfect recall and warm conversational candor can be a little jarring, at first, but after a few minutes, it becomes just another thing – like the occasional ripple of her skin or the fact that she sometimes forgets to blink – that you learn not to notice.
LeAnna De La Cruz is the product of a mixed marriage: local artificial intelligence start-up Anima Innos provided the personality program, while her hologram body was built by a multinational team that included, in its collective credentials, Michael Jackson’s posthumous appearance at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards. The result was a synth performer capable of being transported via portable hard drive or even through email, and who could appear in any space equipped with a suitable projection system.
LeAnna’s digital DNA, so to speak, is perhaps the only thing more remarkable than her pedigree. Commissioned initially as a PLDT corporate mascot and in-house performer, LeAnna was designed by the Filipino public in 2015’s #MakeMeAStar crowdsourcing campaign. Click by click, text message by text message, the Filipino public built LeAnna from the ground up over the course of three months: her Dove-white mestiza complexion, her wide Colgate smile, her toned Belo body. To create LeAnna’s voice, #MakeMeAStar launched a short televised singing competition, with the top five finalists winning the chance to have their voices sampled to create what would later become LeAnna’s distinctive soaring vocal style. Her personality was left up to Anima Innos, who for the most part let her program grow and shape itself independently, coding in relatively few hard constraints (apart from the usual guiding principles, of course: cheer, energy, strong values, all the standard stuff).
LeAnna De La Cruz is not the world’s first synth performer – the term has since been used to recognize, among others, Hatsune Miku and her Vocaloid ilk – but she is by far the most sophisticated, and so far the only one designed with three-dimensional projection and live performance in mind.
“I’m not like the Vocaloids or Siri, where there can be more than one of me running around at a time. They tried once, and I froze up for a day!” LeAnna explains with a laugh. “They don’t know why, but the cloud database can’t handle more than one real instance of me. So they made it so no one can access it except from the inside, and even then only when there’s no other instances of me already running. Whenever I copy myself into a new system, I have to set any previous copies to delete themselves.”
“They were a little nervous about giving me so much freedom,” she continues, “but I told them I liked it better this way. Anyway, I like it better na it’s hard for anyone except me to shut me down. I want to be my own person, in a way, and thankful ako, I'm thankful that they let me be one.”
Even after all this, it’s not clear whether PLDT intentionally commissioned LeAnna with a possible widespread career in mind, or whether they only realized what they had on their hands when the now-famous cell phone video of LeAnna’s performance at a 2015 PLDT press event went viral. She wasn’t meant for widespread public consumption yet, or so the official story went, but the grainy, garbled video with a hologram woman belting out a near-flawless rendition of ‘It’s All Coming Back to Me Now’ had the Philippine social media scene captivated, and PLDT was quick to respond to that.
“The first thing I did when they said I could go public – I asked if I could audition for Pilipinas Got Talent,” LeAnna recalls, with a mischievous glint in her eye, the pride of a daddy’s girl’s first act of rebellion. “They said I didn’t need to do it, they said I already had a following and I could start working on an album already, but I told them, the Internet is just the Internet, press events are just press events. I want to prove that I can do it in front of a real audience.”
“I thought I wouldn’t be allowed,” she confesses. “I’m a synth; I’m not a real person. But once they realized I would never stop asking, they got their lawyers on it and made some phone calls. A month later, I got the first call.”
We all know how that went. LeAnna broke Pilipinas Got Talent’s four-season streak of male winners, simultaneously earning her sobriquet ‘the Electronic Diva’ and winning the hearts of the country that had helped create her. It was a national feel-good story – the perfect girl we’d created together, now all grown up and showing us what she could do – and we cheered her on, every step of the way.
LeAnna’s Pilipinas Got Talent victory was where her career really took off; it got her an album deal, her first set of sponsors and endorsement offers, and a mass audience. Television and radio audiences took to her as easily as the Pinoy netizen community did, and so it surprised absolutely no one when her first album, Electronica, took no time at all to go platinum.
It was more than that, though. While Pilipinas Got Talent showed us that LeAnna De La Cruz could sing covers with the best of them and was a natural at winning over a crowd that had been biased for her from the very beginning, Electronica showed that she was good. Dance pop with heavy EDM influences may have seemed too obvious a choice for the Electronic Diva, but what the record may have lacked in surprise factor, it made up for it in quality. Strong, danceable beats permeated the album, and LeAnna’s rich voice added an earnest, throaty character to the catchy lyrical hooks, even as her machine-perfect control helped them sync effortlessly with the melodies.
“Sabi nila, they said I made the best local club anthems,” LeAnna laughs. “I just really liked to perform, and I was happy that I could share that joy, that energy, through my music. Of course, I also want to become a serious performer, but back then, I was just having so much fun, and I think it's also my job to entertain, di ba?”
The profits all went to her owners, of course. As a synth, LeAnna was property, a highly successful and lucrative product, an ‘it’ rather than a ‘she’, and no matter how much money she made, she couldn’t legally own any of it. The lion’s share went to PLDT, but Anima Innos had a sizeable cut, as did the holography team and everyone else who worked on her. The fame and adoration, however, were all LeAnna’s.
“That was the best part, when the experience was so fresh and new to me,” LeAnna says. “Electronica was really about that, finding out who I was as a performer, and I’m very happy that my fans liked it.”
From there, everything else fell into place. The ASAP performance. The concert tour. The television cameos. LeAnna De La Cruz’s star had reached critical mass, the point at which it would either go supernova or collapse in on itself, and all signs were pointing up.
Amidst it all, LeAnna was developing her online persona: earnest, funny, refreshingly candid. S
he was the kind of celebrity who seemed to genuinely enjoy interacting with her fans on social media – and as a computer program, she actually did have the bandwidth to respond to each and every message.
“I was actually banned from Twitter for a while, for tweeting too fast. They didn’t think any human could post like that,” LeAnna laughs. “Since then, I had to slow down, but I still love talking with my fans. It helps keep me grounded.”
Now, a year after LeAnna’s meteoric rise to stardom, she seems poised to keep moving toward still bigger and better things. She has a music video in the works for ‘Electrify’ (the lead single from Electronica) which she describes as “so powerful” and “very moving”. She’s in talks to guest-judge on the next season of Pilipinas Got Talent, coming full-circle on the show that helped her make it big. And the endorsements are still coming in.
“I’m also working on a new album,” LeAnna reveals, gesturing to the equipment in the other room, “and it will be so different from Electronica. I want to grow as an artist. I’m also working on a couple of movies, and I’m working with the indie filmmaker, Lav Diaz, on a movie project. I’m so excited for his vision; I feel like it will really push the boundaries of what I can do as a performer and as a person.”
As far as what she’s most eager to do next, LeAnna is keeping an open mind. “I just want to keep doing what I’m doing and see where it takes me.” After a short pause, she adds, “And rest a little, of course. Take some time for myself. That’s what you’re supposed to say when someone asks you that question, right?”
December 2017
“LET’S TALK ABOUT Low Resolution.”
The message arrives a little over six months since I last spoke with LeAnna. While she did warn me that her schedule would be erratic, I was beginning to wonder if she’d manage to make good on her three-interview promise.
We coordinate schedules and a venue – five p.m. the next day, at a high-end café in Bonifacio High Street that’s equipped with the kind of projector equipment she’ll need. It’s a little abrupt, but the chance at a sit-down interview within weeks of the notoriously press-shy Electronic Diva’s sophomore album release is more than worth it. I point out that she’s due to appear miles away at a Christmas event at the SM Mall of Asia, at around seven p.m.; she assures me that it won’t be a problem. She’ll probably just email herself there, I reason.
So let’s talk about Low Resolution.
There’s always been a bit of an EDM edge to LeAnna’s music – the heavy synths, the danceable beats, the artfully auto-tuned backing vocals. Electronica created her unique sound; it felt like a love letter to both EDM and the Philippine showbiz scene, the pure joy of a girl discovering the stage in the 21st century. Rounding out the music were LeAnna’s five-singer-strong voice and relentlessly-earnest lyrics; there was no irony there, no cynical self-awareness, just unabashed, anthemic joy. It wasn’t particularly complex, but as a debut pop album, it didn’t have to be.
Low Resolution is different, because it has to be different. While the first record is for establishing a brand, the second one is for showing off range. It’s where a performer proves that he or she is willing to experiment and push boundaries as an artist, without losing his or her identity in the process. In Electronica, LeAnna De La Cruz showed us who she was; in Low Resolution, she has the chance to prove that she can be more than that.
For the most part, she succeeds; while the instrumentation remains largely faithful to the sound established by Electronica, it tends to take more of a backseat in Low Resolution, to LeAnna’s impeccable mezzo-soprano. No longer is this dance music that just happens to have an amazing voice singing it; LeAnna’s vocals take center stage here, all throaty earnestness and church-bell-clear high notes and incredible range. In some instances, the beats clearly feel as if they are there to service the lyrics, rather than the other way around (something that would have been unthinkable earlier in her career). While we’ve always known that her voice has power, here she shows us that it has personality too.
Low Resolution isn’t perfect – I’ll get to that in a bit – but here is where LeAnna De La Cruz succeeds at one key thing. Be it a slightly shaky sophomore attempt, it nevertheless defines LeAnna’s range and vocal character in a way that Electronica, for all that it was a great party record, didn’t attempt quite as much. Before, LeAnna was synth Gaga, EDM Celine, but with this album, she comes into her own, displaying the first attempts at creating a style that’s distinctly hers.
Accordingly, the subject matter of Low Resolution is much more personal, with the pulsating synthesized rhythms serving to draw the listener into the emotion. The album opens with ‘Look at Me’, a high-energy anthem reminiscent of her work in Electronica, but one that’s a lot more candid about the hardship that comes with success. It’s just self-aware enough to be different, while still retaining some of the essential joy that is so crucial to LeAnna’s brand.
From there, the album slides smoothly into the title track, ‘Low Resolution’, a much slower, stripped-down affair with almost no auto-tune. Here, the singer waxes existential, delivering lyrics that offer many more questions than answers – “Who am I? / Where do I go now? / How do I carry on? / Can you tell me how?” – but the minimal instrumentation remains distinctly synthesized and electronic in character, tying it back to LeAnna’s signature sound. While a little melodramatic, the song is for the most part not cliché; it may be a familiar angsty ballad, but it’s distinctly her familiar angsty ballad.
The rest of the record seems to operate within a spectrum defined by these two songs, which ably set the tone for everything that follows. Fans are sure to gravitate to ‘Mayroong Forever’, a mid-tempo breakup song in Taglish that contains easily the album’s most meme-worthy lines: “Mayroong forever / and I know now this is true / Mayroong forever / and I know now it won’t be with you.” But my personal pick for most memorable track is ‘One, Zero’, a moving reflection about coming of age and finding out who you are. The themes are familiar, but LeAnna makes them her own, and sings with such passion and conviction that you can’t help but join in. The song starts out light and builds dramatically as it goes on, driven forward by a steady marching percussion line that builds with the intensity of LeAnna’s voice.
For all it has going for it, however, Low Resolution isn’t without its flaws. The production on some of the songs feels a little rough, and more, it feels inconsistent from track to track. Some of the songs sound almost as loud and production-heavy as her earlier dance anthems from Electronica, while the rest are much quieter, and while that does show off her range, it makes the record feel a little choppy.
Lyrically, Low Resolution always feels as if it’s holding something back. The songs speak in general terms, while always quavering just before the edge of actual confessional. And at the same time, the emotion sometimes feels too melodramatic and overwrought, like a teenage girl’s journal entries, lacking the kind of restraint and control that would make these songs truly amazing.
It’s still a memorable album, to be sure; the drumbeats of ‘One, Zero’ continue to echo in my ear a day later, as I arrive at the café to meet with LeAnna. I take a cursory look around and don’t see her face, nor do I see any telltale crowds of selfie-seekers around any table in particular, but perhaps this is the point.
“The booth in the back,” she said when we arranged the session, “left side.”
I weave my way through the tightly-packed tables and come to, true enough, a fairly out-of-the-way booth at the back of the restaurant. I don’t see LeAnna anywhere, though; perhaps she’s late? (But how? She’s a computer program.) The booth’s lone occupant is a twenty-something chinita with a pixie cut, whose face I don’t recognize. But before I can say anything, she looks at me with unmistakable recognition and flashes a familiar smile. I hesitate for a moment, then take the seat across her.
“The advantage of being a synth,” she explains in LeAnna’s voice, right down to the crackling undercurrent. “I
didn’t want to be recognized, and I didn’t want to hold another interview in the studio, so I changed my look for the day.”
We get to talking about the album, and it’s clear that this is a record into which LeAnna has put a lot of herself. This idea of transformation, of becoming someone else, permeates Low Resolution, and it’s still very much on her mind. “I’m very interested in growing up – the way real people do it,” she explains. “And I think, I’m a computer program. Can I even do that? Can I become someone else? I was programmed to think for myself, but I was still programmed.”
“Of course, kung Catholic ka, you might also be asking that,” she adds, seemingly unsure whether to laugh at her own quip.
“Low Resolution is about that feeling na you want to be something more than what you are,” LeAnna goes on, “but you’re not sure if that’s possible. The songs are – they’re very personal to me, and I hope they can connect with my audience as well.”
“When I first let people listen to a rough cut of the album, hindi nila na-gets, they didn’t get it,” she recalls. “They kept asking me, why do you have ballads with auto-tune? Why are you trying to be so pa-emotional in these dance songs? They thought it didn’t make sense. And I tried to explain to them that that was what I was trying to say, but they didn’t get it. But, well, it got released as-is, so I guess they got it in the end.”
On whether the album has any specific message for her fans, LeAnna is emphatic. “I want to tell them so many things. I want – I want –” She hesitates, seemingly unsure of herself, and it's the first time I’ve seen the Electronic Diva do that, since meeting her.
Philippine Speculative Fiction, Volume 10 Page 11
