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Voice
Of An Angel Around the World |
Voice Of An Angel Rings
Round The World To Millions
Rob Thomson and
Nick Dermody
02/11/1999
THE voice of an
angel rang out around the world last night.
Cardiff
schoolgirl Charlotte Church launched the new Ford car advertisements
to a television audience of one billion people.
Charlotte, 13,
was not in Wales for the premiere of the £6m advertisement in which
she sings her new aria, Just Wave Hello. She was flying
to New York to begin a three-day whistle-stop promotion tour.
On Saturday
Charlotte will be back in Wales to sing at the Rugby World Cup final
in the Millennium Stadium.
But before then
she has another engagement at Munich in Germany.
Just Wave
Hello promises
to be a chart-topping hit for the Cardiff singer.
It was
specially written for Ford’s £6m television advertisement by
Danny Beckerman, and Charlotte’s recording of the song was
supervised by top producer Trevor Horn.
Later this
month Charlotte’s second album - the eagerly awaited follow-up to
her debut The Voice of an Angel - will be released.
Both
Charlotte’s parents travelled with her to the United States
yesterday.
Her television,
radio and press engagements to promote her work were carefully
scheduled so the trip would not be too taxing.
She is already
a veteran of US television with appearances on top ratings
programmes like The David Letterman Show to her credit.
Charlotte’s
agent, Jonathan Shalit, and staff at her record company Sony are
determined that she should not be overworked.
They have
heeded the words of public relations and media guru Max Clifford.
“If Charlotte remains unspoilt she will keep getting better,” he
said.
Now Charlotte
is eagerly anticipating Saturday’s Millennium Stadium appearance.
It will be a
home town engagement for the young singing star. She will be more
concerned about that than the thought that for the second time in a
week she will be singing to a worldwide television audience.
The Ford
advertisement has put Charlotte right at the top of the
international entertainment league.
Even before
last night’s advertisement premiere, with screenings booked for
9pm Greenwich Mean Time, her supporters predicted the song would
become an anthem.
They forecast
an advertising success on the scale of Coca-Cola’s I’d
Like to Teach the World to Sing.
Charlotte’s
own acting part in the advertising film ended with her standing with
arms outstretched atop a Ford car perched on a cliff edge.
The scene was
filmed near Penzance in Cornwall two months ago.
Perfect vehicle
for drive to truly worldwide success
IF a billion
people really were tuned in for Ford’s round-the-world screening
of its latest advert then they would have seen a lot of locations
flashed up on the small screen.
Unfortunately,
I don’t think Wales was one of them.
Maybe I blinked
at a crucial moment but the nearest Charlotte Church or anyone else
pictured in the emotion-tugging advert ever came to Wales was the
closing scene on the cliff-edge theatre in Cornwall.
Ford’s new
advert should prove the perfect vehicle, as it were, for shooting
Cardiff’s 13-year-old singing sensation to truly worldwide fame
and giving Ford the one-world image it seeks.
Every race,
colour, creed and class of car driver and passenger was there to be
seen, from Aboriginal dancers in the Outback, through close-knit
Eastern families in traditional costumes to a kissing couple in a
home near you.
The message for
300 million households was clear: Ford cars are more than motors to
get you from one exotic advertisement location to another; they are
places in which to have emotional experiences.
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