Perplexed Destiny

Fantasy is the 15th studio album by Filipino singer Regine Velasquez. The two-disc album contains both pop and mid-tempo sounds, as well as some softer and more contemporary melodies. The first disc contains new Original Pilipino Music (OPM) materials while the second disc contains cover songs from various artists. This two-disc album also consists of two packaging editions, the “colored one” and the “black & white edition,” each containing collector’s item photo cards and the CDs.

The album debuted at number one spot and was certified Gold Award after two weeks upon released, and was nominated at the 24th Philippine Awit Awards for Album Of The Year and Best Performance By A Female Recording Artist for the song You Don’t Know.

For this album, Velasquez pointed that she would like to work with young composers and assemble it with entirely new OPM materials than covering songs which done from her previous albums, Covers, Vol. 1, Covers, Vol. 2 and Low Key. And throughout the project, she worked with her now husband singer-songwriter Ogie Alcasid (the inspiration for “The Funny One”), with whom she had collaborated most of her hit songs from her previous albums. Though the second disc of the album contains mostly cover songs talking about being in love and marriage, the songs were mainly chosen by Velasquez herself going through her own wedding preparations at that time with Alcasid. The album also includes a song called S.M.I.L.E. written by Noel Mendez that became the theme song for Operation Smile after Velasquez became one of the ambassador to the foundation together with the main theme song of TV musical series Diva called Walang Iba and the love theme of TV romantic comedy series I ♥ You Pare!penned by Janno Gibbs called True Romance, both which Velasquez starred aired over GMA-7.

Overall, the album is light and happy, and sentimental, at the same time. It seems like you can actually feel the happiness she’s feeling on the moment of the album’s production. Although, I prefer some of the original versions of some songs, she is still “the Queen” when it comes to the Philippine music industry. She belts those notes like it’s just all in her imagination. And I couln’t really blame the producers because they are targeting the Pinoys who is very fond of slow, sentimental songs.