Blush — the Asian Spice Girls

If you were an ardent Spice Girls fan or ever wished that Pussy Cat Dolls (the next most popular girl band) shouldn’t have broken up, this will cheer you up! Come March, and one may witness the rise of the next girl band called Blush as the band will be launching its first single. What sets this girl group apart from the rest is that all the five girls are essentially Asian in origin.

Blush happened as a brainchild of the Grammy- winning English songwriter and record producer Eliot Kennedy, in association with Jon Niermann, the former president of Walt Disney, Asia-Pacific.

Kennedy was also the man behind the formation of the English pop group Spice Girls. Besides, he has also worked with artists like Robbie Williams, Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, etc. And after almost two decades since Spice Girls came into being, Kennedy decided to formulate “a pan Asian band”. Blush members include Alisha Budhrani (India), Victoria Chan (China), Natsuko Danjo (Japan), Lee Jihae (South Korea) and Angeli Flores (Philippines).

“The group was initially named as Spice Girls 2, but during the selections Kennedy thought of calling it Blush,” says Indian music director Shamir Tandon, who was responsible for selecting the Indian member. “I tried my best to keep the audition procedure low key as to avoid turning it into a reality show,” he jokes. “I short listed five Indian girls out of 1,000, who were then trained in Hong Kong and Alisha was chosen as the Indian face. The music is typically bubblegum pop. It is hardcore fun with no serious element. It’s a young band…all the girls are between 18 and 20 years of age.”