Paolo Santos, singer, songwriter, and acoustic guitarist, was born on June 29, 1975. He is a Bachelor of Science in Business Economics, and has taken up a year’s fellowship in international relations at Webster University in Geneva (Switzerland). He once thought he would try a career in either field or both. In fact, from school, he went straight to work in marketing and finance.

How he has ended up singing and playing professionally is a story of romance and conflict.

Paolo in fact has been into music since his preteen years, longer than he has been into anything else. For much of his life, however, he kept at it guardedly, even secretly, lest he upset elders who did not think music the proper career for him and who fed him tales of disappointments, of penury, of tragedy of one sort or another suffered by sons who did not listen.

He still asked to go to music school. Once decidedly unable to have his way, he contented himself with learning and practicing music on his own - reading, listening, watching, and, then, doing. He sang and accompanied himself on his father’s old hobby guitar, hoping yet to be able one day to muster the courage to follow his heart.

‘The tug of music was just so strong it was tearing me apart inside,’ he says.

The courage came in calculated amounts before breaking into one explosion of happy abandon. First, he sang and played to himself. Next, he tried his music on audiences of partying, non-paying friends. Then, finally, he just quit corporate existence and plunged himself headlong into a life and career of acoustic music.

To his own surprise, Paolo took the contemporary scene by storm. It has been only his fourth professional year, and already his face and sound have become familiar nationwide.

He has brought out several albums, each landing at the top of the charts. He has shared the stage with international artists like Duncan Sheik, Jason Mraz, and Keith Martin.

He was a guest performer at two concerts on the American West Coast - one in San Francisco, the other in Los Angeles – with Jasmine Trias, the Filipino-Hawaiian discovery on American Idol, the popular talent-hunt television show in the United States. Further American performances are being arranged for him. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.