Highlight of 2011 - The global launch of the new pan Asian girl group BLUSH

All of last year we were following the exciting and largest search for the next top girl group in Asia - Project Lotus. Project Lotus set out to find the best talent from Philippines, China, India, Japan and South Korea in open auditions around Asia. Thousands of girls applied and if you remember I also tried my luck. In my audition tape I did a mashup of Justin Bieber and Natalie Bassingthwaite, it was quite tragic and unsuprisingly I did not make it through to the next round. Unlike me, the other contestants were unbelievably talented! After months of gruelling training and eliminations the five group members have been unveiled! The group members are Angeli Flores from the Philippines, Victoria Chan from China, Alisha Budhrani from India, Natsuko Danjo from Japan, and Lee Ji-hae from South Korea. Their chosen group name is BLUSH!!! Quite a feminine name for the girls.

Project Lotus Executive Producer Jon Niermann says Blush will release their exciting debut single in May, right after the Project Lotus reality/competition TV show has finished airing. Blush will be the first Pan-Asian group that will be launched globally in both the US, Europe and Asian market. The girls sound has been described as sweet and edgy, I really can't wait for their debut!

What do you think of the BLUSH?

Grammy Award Winning producer Eiliot Kennedy who serves as the creative director-producer for Project Lotus said that no Auto-Tune will be used on the tracks and there won't be too many ballads on the CD.

Project Lotus Update – More Celebrity Judges are named

Exciting news! Members of the Spice Girls are signed on to judge and mentor the contestants on Project Lotus (names haven’t been disclosed yet, I would love Posh to do it). Hong Kong Superstar Karen Mok was also named as a judge along with former GRAMMY Foundation Chair Steve Schnur.

As mentioned in my previous entries, Project Lotus will be made in to a TV reality show that is slated to be broadcasted early next year. It won’t be anything like ‘Idol’, ‘X Factor’ because the public doesn’t get to vote for their favourite. The show will be purely based on the journey to find the superstar girl band. The judges will have complete control of selecting the girls that make up the band. It will be interesting to see if the public agrees with their decision once the members of the band has been unveiled.

The TV show plan to celebrate the good side of the girls characters only. It sounds like they want everyone to get along like a happy family, as seen in Masterchef. The majority of reality TV shows want drama and cattiness for entertainment value, like Top Model, Big Brother. So it’ll be interesting to see if Project Lotus will make good TV viewing.

The girls will be from five different countries so there will be cultural differences and possibly language barriers if their English isn’t strong. The girls would be in a competitive environment and I expect friction might occur. Creative director-producer Eliot Kennedy expects the girls to bond closely with each other and form a strong team network in this journey.

The five finalists from Korea have been selected! The lucky girls have not been unveiled to the public yet.

A total of 16 songs have already been composed by the talented songwriters that include Gary Barlow. Popular music in the five countries are uniquely different, would they try to blend it all in or give the girls a poppy sound like Spice girls, R’n’B sound like Pussycat Dolls. The question is how will Project Lotus make a musical impact to the world?