Top of Singapore Pops (extract)
Source: Straits Times
Date: 09 Aug 2002

Listen up as the country's best music-makers turn up the nationalistic volume on their homegrown choices

By Samuel Lee

MADE-IN-SINGAPORE music has come a long way.

On one hand, there are Stefanie Sun and A-do's best-selling Mandarin pop and Sheikh Haikel's soulful R&B. On the other, there are Chou Pi Jiang's Chinese rap-rock and Corrinne May's adult-oriented folk.

STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART: Cool, catchy, bluesy, simple. These are just some of the picks from Kit Chan and Dick Lee (above), Jacintha Abisheganaden and Tanya Chua.
As Singapore turns 37 today, Life! asks four music personalities to list their all-time homegrown favourites and share what National Day means to them.

KIT CHAN
Singer-actress, 29
Will release a new album next month, act in the musical East Meets West in Hongkong this month, and take on the lead role of the Empress Dowager in Forbidden City: Portrait Of An Empress as part of the Esplanade's opening in October

1 Voice Of The Ordinary People
It's widely sung and associated with kopi tiam culture. It was the theme to the TV series Neighbour in 1986. Chen Jiaming did a great job.

2 Singapore Style
This is a hard-sell Singapore song by Liang Wern Fook from the xinyao days with lots of deliberate references to 'Singaporean-ness'.

3 Home
A Dick Lee song I sang at the NDP in 1998. I had just moved back after living in Taiwan for five years. So the lyrics, especially 'Wherever my dreams may take me, this will always be home' meant a lot to me.

'National Day is for indifferent Singaporeans. They should remember that this is their country and they've got to do something about it.'

DICK LEE
Composer-producer, 45
Penned score to the musical Forbidden City: Portrait Of An Empress, which is in The Esplanade's Opening Festival line-up in October

1 Count On Me Singapore
It's so well-crafted, it gave me my first sense of national pride when I heard it at 1990's NDP. That's the year my Mad Chinaman came out and I performed the album version of Rasa Sayang at the parade.

2 Home
Another ND song but more personal. I wrote it for Kit Chan while in Hongkong doing Snow.Wolf.Lake in 1997.

3 Deeper
It's a duet I did with Chris Ho in the early 1980s. I was going through my band phase and playing keyboards with his Zircon Lounge band. I was trying something different. So was Chris, who didn't usually do mainstream pop.

'National Day means work. I'm creative director for this year's NDP.'

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