In My Life

Since National Day is around the corner, let’s talk a bit about NDP songs.

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Jimmy Ye wrote both the music and lyrics to 2 songs for this year’s NDP.

One is called “Will You”, and the other is “There’s No Place I’d Rather Be”. (Some of you might remember that Jimmy Ye used to be a pop singer many years back, as well as a talented songwriter.)

Incidentally, there’s this cool official NDP site where you can listen to ALL the National Day songs from as early as 1988 right up to 2007. 

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“There’s No Place I’d Rather Be” = “Home (Part II)”

Now, I would like to talk a little bit about “There’s No Place I’d Rather Be”.

If you’ve not heard this song yet, believe me, you’d probably hear it in the weeks to come as we build up to the National Day Parade. There’s just no escaping every year’s national day songs.

But anyway, if you haven’t heard “There’s No Place I’d Rather Be” yet, do take a moment to listen to it here (or through the YouTube clip above).

My verdict is that it is essentially “Home (Part II)”. (The original “Home” being the 1998 classic composed by Dick Lee, which remains one of my favourite NDP songs.)

I have a very strong gut feeling that Jimmy Ye listened to Dick Lee’s “Home” one too many times whilst trying to gain inspiration to write this year’s NDP song.

Trust me, after listening to “There’s No Place I’d Rather Be”, you’d see the similarities too.

Firstly, as with “Home”, it’s sung by our local songbird Kit Chan (who is one of my favourite local singers). She does a great job of the songs, as usual. There’s a certain Broadway-musical style to her singing, which I really like.

Secondly, the lyrics basically talk about the same thing as “Home”, e.g. the allusion to wanting to be no other place apart from home. The general sentiments are very similar. (But then again, this is an NDP song…so what’s new right?)

Next, the basic melody and chord structure sounds suspiciously similar to “Home” . One could almost think that he/she could sing the melody of “Home” over that of “There’s No Place I’d Rather Be”. There are just so many subtle musical aspects of the song which are similar to “Home”.

But you know what’s the best part?

It’s the first 3 notes of the chorus!

Just compare the tune of ”This is home…” with “There’s no place…”. They’re essentially the same notes! (i.e. 3-4-5), so you couldn’t fault someone for mistaking one song for the other.

Everytime I hear the chorus “There’s no place I’d rather be…”, I’m so tempted to sing “This is home, truly, where I know I must be…”, haha!

(But to be fair to Jimmy Ye, I thought his verse lyrics were great. Very poetic, and filled with a grand dose of imagery, e.g. Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, River Kwai.)

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What Happened To Good Music?

Seriously folks, whatever happened to the good NDP songs?

It seems to me the best songs were written in the last century (i.e. before 2000). The new NDP songs from 2000 onwards don’t seem to have much lasting power, in my opinion.

The new songs are like “Hmm, ok…this is a nice song, but come next year, I probably won’t remember it anymore”. (Case in point: Who can remember the NDP songs of last year?)

However, us Singaporeans tend to have not much problems recalling the songs of the 80’s and 90’s such as:

Home
Five Stars Arising
Chan Mali Chan
Stand Up For Singapore
We Are Singapore
It’s The Little Things
Count On Me Singapore
One People, One Nation, One Singapore 

It just goes to show you the lasting effect these old songs have on us. People tend to remember the good songs, and not the not-so-good ones. 

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An Overlooked Gem

Apart from Dick Lee’s “Home”, which I think is a masterpiece, the other NDP song which I really like is “It’s The Little Things”, released in 1992, with music by Patrick Seet and lyrics by Ivan Chua.

It’s such a sweet song. I love its melody! I recommend that you give it a listen.

Ah, they don’t write songs like these anymore.