Do we like Jose Mari Chan?
Our score: 8 out of 10. Decades of work with no harmful words or acts found, plus steady charity backing, though the record on social issues is thin.
Jose Mari Chan was born in Iloilo City in 1945 and wrote his first song at 13 without being able to read music. He studied economics at Ateneo, partly to help run the family sugar business. He was a TV host on ABS-CBN's Nine-Teeners before his first single, Afterglow, came out in 1967.
In 1975 he moved to the US for the sugar business and came home 11 years later. His 1986 album Constant Change won Album of the Year at the Awit Awards. Christmas in Our Hearts, co-written with Rina Cañiza, became the national holiday anthem, and he still chairs a sugar company as well as a music one.
Scandal-wise, the cupboard is bare. Searches for lawsuits, court rulings or allegations against the singer turned up nothing but people with similar names. The nearest thing to a stoush is June 2026, when he said he no longer gets cheques from record labels because nobody buys CDs. He then clarified that he meant physical sales only.
On the harm check, he's simply quiet. No remarks about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, vaccines or the climate turned up, and no campaigning for anyone's cause. The company he keeps this year is SB19, the P-pop group, in a government tourism campaign about family, faith and togetherness. That's honestly the whole list, so it's a pass on thin evidence rather than a rainbow-flag record.
The recent stuff is warm. He told the Daily Tribune his songwriting is a gift from God and his songs are a gift back, a very gentle kind of faith. In the royalty row he said he felt frustrated for young singer-songwriters, which is a decent thing to say from someone who doesn't need the money.
On the good stuff, the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers publicly thanked him in 2024 for backing its charity work, including calamity relief, free medical missions and rural school support. The report doesn't say how much he gave or exactly what he did, so we're not inflating it. He also became a beloved meme every September, and by his own account he takes it in good humour.