Rants and raves about stuff happening in and around my life in Singapore

Friday, July 19, 2013

One Singapore

7:05 AM By Barry Smyth 1 comment

August the 9th approaches and for Singapore that means time to celebrate National Day. As always to welcome the event there will be a spectacular show, fireworks and of course a new national day tribute song. There are many national day songs that have stood the test of time (such as Home by Dick Lee for example) and are still being sung today, so with all of that experience you'd expect them to get better each year, alas it seems that the reverse is happening.



This years mid-tempo National Day song is called "One Singapore"  and is sung by Sing A Nation, a choir comprising 68 Singaporeans from all walks of life. The melody (sic) was composed by music director Elaine Chan, and the lyrics (sic) by theatre doyenne Selena Tan.

Having listened to it all I can say is that it's really bad. The lyrics alone are terrible I mean really terrible, including the rap in the middle of the song that it so infantile and misplaced that I struggled to understand why. And while the music (and I am being kind to the midi like soundtrack by labelling it as music) may be mid-tempo and have a good beat that's about all I can that's good about it.

The whole thing reminds me of a cheesy song that's been made up by aspiring "Glee" wannabe school children for a school play with the accompanying cringe worthy factor that such a song brings to mind.

Comments range from "belongs on the Kids Central channel" to "68 Singaporeans can't save this song" to others about "comas" and "bleeding ears" have already been made, and those are some of the kinder ones.

I think what they need to do is a "Eurovision" style contest. Invite people to submit songs. Create a television show around it and let the members of the public vote for the song that they think should be chosen. There are many talented Singaporeans out there who can do a whole lot better.

In the meantime here is the song with the accompanying (and equally cheesy video). Feel free to drop off a comment if you feel inspired, oh and watch out for those gag reflexes!.

Click here to listen to "One Singapore"

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1 comments:

  1. And just to prove a point about how talented Singaporeans are (even if there can be no saving the lyrics) here's a local group by the name of "Pitch Feather" cover of the same song, which it has to be said is not bad at all.

    https://soundcloud.com/pitchfeather/one-singapore-ndp-2013-theme

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