26-year-old freelance actress and EXO cover group won the 2016 Pinoy KPop Star competition held at Skydome, SM North EDSA on July 23.
Andrea Fe Padilla won the vocal category for her version of You Are My Everything, originally sung by Gummy for the Korean hit drama Descendants of the Sun.
Padilla bested the nine other contestants and brought home P30, 000 cash. She will represent the Philippines in the online semi-final round of the 2016 K-pop World Festival.
A Communication Arts graduate at University of Santo Tomas, Padilla said that she was a fan of the Korean Drama Descendants of the Sun.
“I wanted to learn how to sing the drama’s theme song ‘You are my everything’ and as I searched for tutorial videos on YouTube I saw auditions videos for the Pinoy K-Pop star. Since I will study the song I thought that I might as well join the auditions.” Padilla said.
Padilla studied the song for three straight days before submitting her audition piece. Placing second was John Paul Soliva, who won P20, 000; and Venisse Siy won third place and P10, 000.
Nine-member cover dance group EXOTIX emerged as the grand prize winner of the performance category. Before venturing to K-Pop dance competition, the Cavite-based dance group started as a hip-hop group in 2012.
The group is composed of Julliarne Christopher Trinidad, Jerville De Guzman, Leonal Madrigal, John Elmer Accion, Dennie Sanga, Mac Quijano, Rodvian Datu, Nino Cruz and Joshua Karangalan. EXOTIX performed ‘Monster’ by the K-pop group EXO.
Bagging second place was Amigo7 for their GOT7 cover dance performance while cover group NOXX, won third place. Both groups took home P 20, 000 and P 10, 000, respectively.
The judges for the competition were KCC Director OH Choong Suk; Rey Ilagan, Editor-in-Chief of Garage magazine; Hwang Yohan, grand prize winner of ABS-CBN’s “I love OPM”; Happee Sy-Go of Pulp Live World and Pulp magazine; Gigi Yia of Sparkling; K-musical actress Hong Namki; and Dasuri Choi, KCC K-Pop Dance Instructor and second runner-up of Eat Bulaga” contest “You’re My Foreignay. ADVT
