So yes, I'm a little late to post on this.
The last few days while I was in Melbourne, a certain parody cover of Gaga's Bad Romance has gotten a lot of flank from the online community and people IRL. Though Mother Monster (Gaga) herself has came out saying that the changed lyrics 'were lovely' during a recent stopover in Singapore, she is really just playing the PR card and trying not to make a big deal out of it. So what's the big deal, you might ask? After all, people do parodies and covers of Gaga's songs all the time.
Maybe this was just one mighty publicity stunt by Gaga and NDP organising committee to raise the profile of Gaga's "Born This Way" album and NDP 2011! Scandalous!
But for the NDP organising committee to change the lyrics without obtaining the rights to modify the song seems pretty low on several levels. It has since been yanked off YouTube, and the event organisers has decided to drop the song from this year's parade entirely.
The committee's prudence in obtaining the rights to perform the song is commendable. To have such a song performed at NDP is understandable as it is a (freaking) popular and catchy song that many would have heard of. But it is the local music community that is suffering from such decisions.
Whatever happened to supporting the local talents? We have a ready pool of talented musicians and bands who'd be more than willing to contribute to the NDP cause, not only would they get to showcase their talents, but what better way to raise their profile then on the national stage?
Granted, we had done a lot to support local talents previously, but they were largely already famous stars in the regional stage. Artistes such as Stefanie Sun, JJ Lin, Kaira Gong, Tanya Chua, Kit Chan, etc had all been featured in past NDPs, some more than once. Even the previous efforts to bring in Singapore Idols were commendable.
But there are so many other talents out there. 2009's "What do you see?" by Electrico was a right step.
And it worth mentioning that it has bought about an equally heart-wrenching rendition of "LeKuaSiMi" by mrbrown and his band, Electrician).
Last year's "Song for Singapore" by Corrinne May was also move in the right direction.
This year's "In A Heartbeat" by Slyvia Ratonel further confirms that the organisers are finally looking at other options than using "Home" by Kit Chan as the feature theme song year after year (I mean, seriously, how many times must that song be used over and over?).
This little songbird first came into the mainstream spotlight at last year's NDP covering Stefanie Sun's "One United People".
So how about going beyond getting musicians performing theme songs? I'm sure there will be artistes in a genre that organisers can find to compose catchy songs for the pre- and post-parade performance segments. All it takes is the right level of publicity. There are so many other talented musicians in the local scene to be bought into the mainstream and worth supporting, Jack and Rai and SIXX just to name a few.
Let's stop shamelessly doing rip-offs and start looking after our local talents. NDP is supposed to be for Singaporeans, not international superstars.
