Philippines' Carmelle Wins First Eurovision Song Contest Asia in Bangkok

Filipino singer Carmelle Collado, 19, won the first Eurovision Song Contest Asia in Bangkok on Saturday night, taking the Philippines to victory with Sobra-Sobra on 211 points. It was the first regional edition of the contest staged outside Europe, and Thailand finished 41 points behind, with Vietnam third.

Eleven countries competed at the One Bangkok Forum in a show that ran two and a half hours including advertising. Performing as Carmelle, she topped both the national juries and the public ballot. She grew up beside the railway tracks in the Bicol region of south-eastern Luzon and has competed in televised talent contests since she was 12. The song mixes pop and rap, features the traditional kubing and kulintang, and is sung in Tagalog and English. Carmelle called it “a tribute to all Filipino women” and said female empowerment was its theme.

Left-leaning outlets approach the event from two angles. The Guardian leads with the result: the points, the margin over Thailand, the jury and public votes, Carmelle's background and her own account of the song's message. The New York Times profiles fans who flew in, including Simon Robinson, 63, of Melbourne, who first watched as an eight-year-old in Yorkshire, and Lee Hudson, a television executive in Kuala Lumpur, who said, “Eurovision Asia makes sense because the musical cultures are distinct.” Its portion supplied here centers on nostalgia, Europeans living in Asia and first-time American attendees rather than the scoreboard. The two do not contradict each other and both treat the Asian edition as a milestone. BBC News, in the alternative group, matches the Guardian's winner focus, calling Carmelle the front-runner. Right-leaning outlets had not reported the story at the time of writing.