In My Life

(This post is also reproduced on the Songcraft blog.)

(Davyd Chong’s “Make It Through”)

After listening to and writing so much about NDP songs, and since National Day is fast approaching, I’m rather tempted to write my own song for Singapore.

But anyway, enough about me.

I wanna talk a bit about this YouTube clip I chanced upon recently, which is a song written by local composer/songwriter Davyd Chong.

This song “Make It Through” won him the first prize in the “Get Real” songwriting competition organized by Channel NewsAsia back in 2004. (Some of you might remember hearing about this competition back then. I certainly did.)

It’s quite interesting to read Davyd’s profile (here). His list of musical achievements is indeed very impressive. 

It says he started seriously composing music at the age of 16 (wow!), and was a student of VJC where he won 2nd prize in the “Creative Songwriting Category” during the ‘01 VJC Music Festival.

Winning the “Get Real” songwriting competition in 2004 was his big break.

Now about the song: It’s a rather grim and gloomy-sounding song, but I guess that’s the whole idea of the song, cos it was written to reflect the rather grim situation facing our country just only three years ago. (It’s funny how in today’s good times, we easily forget how bad the economy was back in ’03 and ’04.)

It’s a sombre song, and yet, there is this glimmer of hope which emerges through the song (“But I’m holding on to a hope that lasts forever…”).

It’s basically a song about staying tight and making it through the rough times together.

I can’t exactly say I’m fascinated with the melody, but I think it’s quite alright.

But nonetheless, I think it’s a well-crafted song with meaningful lyrics, and I’m really proud to know that Singapore has such talented composers/songwriters out there.

I think it augurs well for the future of songwriting in our nation.