Singer Lea Salonga: Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You is not as happy as you think

The Filipino-American returns with her first holiday album in 20 years

Lea Salonga says she is 'trying to always be a good representative for Filipinos everywhere'. Getty Images

An avalanche of Christmas-themed ditties is almost upon us. Mariah Carey is reportedly gearing up for a blockbuster campaign celebrating the 30th anniversary of her seasonal hit All I Want for Christmas Is You, while reissues of Christmas-themed classic albums by Frank Sinatra and Rod Stewart are also due this month.

Returning to the fray this year is Lea Salonga. The Filipino-American singer and stage actress unveiled her holiday album Sounding Joy this week, featuring reinterpretations of festive favourites, including Carey’s blockbuster hit and Bing Crosby’s Silent Night/What Child Is This?

This is Salonga’s first holiday album in two decades, and she describes it as a genre that stirs up powerful emotions, and not always happy ones.

“It is challenging because, in one sense, it is actually a safe kind of music that you can't really do anything sacrilegious with,” she tells The National ahead of her Sunday concert at Dubai's Coca-Cola Arena. “But at the same time, there are plenty of songs within that music that explore the various emotions one can feel during the holidays.

“It's not always going to be festive. We all know someone who’s lost a loved one, and it is during these times that they really lean into those melancholy feelings.”

She points to her reworking of 1963’s Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home) as an example of that fluid emotional terrain. Originally sung by US R&B singer Darlene Love, its chirpy and upbeat melodies mask lovelorn lyrics that hint at sadness and the betrayal of a broken relationship.

Salonga also questions, albeit cheekily, the real message behind All I Want for Christmas Is You, which Carey wrote with composer Walter Afanasieff.

“That song is tinged with so much sadness. When I heard this song, it made me wonder what Mariah Carey was thinking and how come she made it so happy that it can be played in the malls?” she says. “But that’s the thing about being a great singer or actor – you read the words and perform them in a way that you feel is right.”

Salonga has been perfecting that craft for over three decades on stage and screen. While her most mainstream success has been singing voices for two landmark animated productions – 1992's Aladdin, as Princess Jasmine, and the title singing role for the 1996 film Mulan – Salonga's biggest legacy lies in widening the ethnic representation in the theatre industry.

Born in Manila, she was already recognised as a burgeoning local talent – with lead roles in productions of The King and I, Annie and Fiddler on the Roof – when English stage impresario Cameron Mackintosh rolled into town in 1988, looking for a starlet. Unable to find a sufficiently talented South-east Asian singer in Europe to play the hostess Kim in his upcoming West End production of Miss Saigon, Mackintosh held auditions in Manila, where a 19-year-old Salonga nabbed the part.

Lea Salonga with director Nicholas Hytner in rehearsals for the hit musical Miss Saigon at London's Theatre Royal in 1989. Getty Images

The musical – charting the love affair between Kim and American soldier Chris (played by British stage actor Simon Bowman) – was criticised by some reviewers for its superficial portrayal of Asian women. Salonga’s addition to the nearly all-white cast was also deemed tokenistic.

Salonga disagrees with some of the commentary. Not only did she earn her role, she notes, but the successful production allowed her to push more boundaries by getting her noticed by the producers behind Aladdin and Mulan.

“Here is the thing, you can have representation, but if the person hired doesn’t have the goods, then we’ve got a problem,” she says. “Then it feels like a cheap stunt without any great thought behind it.

“But if you hire someone – even after some initial misgivings – because they are the best person that auditioned that day, then it feels natural and makes absolute sense. I’d like to think that there is still a common-sense approach in that the people who have talent are the ones getting hired.”

Lea Salonga performing at Carnegie Hall in New York in 2016. WireImage

That's as much reflection as Salonga is willing to do. As a veteran of the industry, she knows she is only as good as her next show. “I am a workhorse in that I do the gig and don't think about its significance or consequences until later. I mean, there will be folks who consider me a pioneer in certain ways, but I feel like I am just a lucky duck that got to do some pretty amazing stuff,” she says.

“As a Filipino, I also feel that responsibility to still represent people from my country whenever I go anywhere to perform, and it’s something that I take seriously. It’s definitely something that I’ve carried probably since doing Miss Saigon for the first time in London and trying to always be a good representative for Filipinos everywhere.”

Lea Salonga performs on Sunday at Coca-Cola Arena, Dubai. Showtime is 7.30pm; tickets start at Dh150