MANILA, Philippines – Jim Paredes believes that Original Pilipino Music artists and Filipinos should embrace OPM before the world recognizes it.
“I’ve always said before that for us to become international, we have to come in as Filipinos,” he said in a recent interview.
He took for example the Korean pop music, which he said gained popularity after Koreans have supported their own music.
“So I really think, we really have to do OPM for Filipinos and gano’n tayo mapapansin sa mundo. We cannot come in sounding like LA, we have to come in as who we are,” he said.
Paredes also reminded OPM artists that “kung gusto natin mapansin sa mundo, dapat content-provided tayo. Right now hardware provided tayo. Magagaling ang singers natin, but they don’t sing OPM to the world.”
“So what we need is we have the hardware, and that hardware will sing OPM to the world, the world will listen,” he added.
In the end, Paredes emphasized that for the OPM industry to continuously evolve and be known to the world, the artists and the Filipinos should work hand-in-hand in making the world listen to OPM.