Yesterday was Singapore’s 60th National Day (Happy birthday Singapore!)

And what is National Day without the Singaporean classic song “Home”?

There is absolutely no doubt that “Home” is the classic Singaporean national song (aside from our national anthem). There’s no better way to ruin your makeup and composure than to listen to this song when you’re homesick and flying on Singapore Airlines 10,000km away…

So it is super interesting to come across this really interesting article about the song’s creation.

But what is super surprising is the fact that the song wasn’t even written as a National Day song: the song was put together for the Sing Singapore festival.

[The purpose of Sing Singapore] was to sort of build a Singapore song repertoire…. The good thing about [Sing Singapore] was that, because ‘national song’ was never mentioned, there was no pressure. It was just like, “write a song from your heart”. That’s why I guess it’s heartfelt and that sentiment has reached out and continues to reach out – not to say that songs that are written for patriotic purposes do not have the same effect… It’s like a ballad whereas the others are anthems, so this showed another face of patriotism. – Dick Lee, songwriter, source

And the initial reaction (from the Sing Singapore committee) seems to have been doubt:

The content of ‘Home’ was not directed by the government in the way, say, ‘Stand Up For Singapore’ was. So the first reaction to ‘Home’ was: can it be a national song? Why does it sound so different from the songs that had come before? Because I produced it, I was asked, “Why doesn’t it have timpanis and the big marching band and the big choirs? First of all, why is it a slow song? It’s nothing like ‘Stand up! For Singapore!’ with the gusto and the choir.” – Sydney Tan, producer, source

What is also super interesting to me is how inspiration played a huge role in the song’s creation: it took less than an hour to write!

I remember that it all tumbled out. It all came as almost one breath. So I wrote that song really quickly. I usually write a melody first, and sometimes I’ll sleep on the melody for a while before I set the lyric, maybe a few days, and quite often I rewrite, I tweak. But this one, I remember doing all at once also because the deadline was quite short and I was able to. It felt right. I wrote the words and I wrote the tune all within, like, less than an hour. The melody I remember, came at once in a flow. (PJ: emphasis mine)

I sang it in my home, in my study room in Hong Kong overlooking Wan Chai. I’m on the mid-level looking down at the city and feeling like this is lovely, but it’s not my city. – Dick Lee, songwriter, source

It then became a National Day song, as the NDP chairman for 1998 was also on the Sing Singapore committee and liked the song.

Dick: What I understand is that, also on the the [Sing Singapore] committee was the NDP chairman for 1998. So he liked it and he then included it as a last minute, sort of, entree. The song was selected in December and we recorded it.

Sydney: I think that was the first time the song at that time was suddenly taken and used for National Day. It wasn’t written as a National Day song but because of its popularity, it was chosen. (PJ: emphasis mine) source

The rest of the article describes how the three of them (Kit Chan, Dick Lee and Sydney Tan) felt about the song’s growing popularity over the years.

For me, I think there are a few takeaways that I think are relevant to my current role in a large system.

  1. it is important to not over-optimise, but to have enough space for optionality. Imagine if the Sing Singapore festival had been cut out due to rationalization efforts (“why not combine this with our National Day song selection process?”)… Singapore would have really lost out.
  2. As a nation, we tend to focus on perspiration, but maybe we should now focus on sparking inspiration.
  3. The committee’s reaction was interesting for me, because it really emphasises the importance of humility: that we often really don’t know. Even if your idea or project is backed by solid reasoning, it might still be a damp squib. And if your project was the result of a 55 min midnight melancholic episode, hey, maybe that might be the next big thing! Maybe most selection committees might be better off if they view themselves as overseers of experiments.
  4. Directed efforts (what Nassim Taleb called ‘teleological’) might be self-defeating… I’m reminded of an earlier blog post summarizing ideas from the book ‘Why Greatness Cannot be Planned’, which points out that if you aim for greatness, that aim might actually prevent you from getting there, because you miss out on the necessary conditions for the end-state. In this case, because

    The good thing about [Sing Singapore] was that, because ‘national song’ was never mentioned, there was no pressure. It was just like, “write a song from your heart”. - Dick Lee

hence, that was maybe why we were able to have our national classic. If there was the direction to “create a national classic”, that direction will likely be self-defeating (not least due to Campbell’s Law and other effects mentioned here).