The organizers of Singapore’s National Day Parade have found themselves the object of ridicule after they modified the lyrics of a Lady Gaga hit to create a song about the parade’s goodie bag.
They performed the ditty, called the Fun Pack Song, once at last Saturday’s rehearsal for the parade, and had planned to repeat it for the pre-parade segment on Aug 9.
The clip of the performance of the song, which modifies the lyrics of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, has gone viral and been panned by netizens on YouTube.
Last night, the parade organizers said they had secured the public performance permit for a series of songs, including that hit.
‘But we did not realize that the rights obtained did not include rights to modify the lyrics of the song. We are currently working to rectify this,’ said the chairman of the NDP show segment, Col. Ong Tze-Ch’in, in a statement on Tuesday night.
He did not specify the kind of rectification to be made, but it is understood that the Fun Pack Song will not be performed until a go-ahead is obtained from the publisher of the song and Lady Gaga’s recording company.
The Defense Ministry had issued the statement in response to The Straits Times’ queries about the video clip.
Netizens have panned the Fun Pack Song as ‘unoriginal,’ ‘a disgrace’ and ‘absolute rubbish,’ among other things.
As at 12.30 a.m. this morning, the video had garnered more than 17,000 views, with more than 70 ‘likes’, more than 2,000 ‘dislikes’ and close to 900 comments. Video clips of other segments of last Saturday’s rehearsal that were put up on YouTube the same day attracted 3,000 views at most by late last night.
Undergraduate Low Wei Xiang, 22, said NDP organizers are ‘trying too hard to reach out to the young and look cool’.
The Nanyang Technological University student added: ‘Sitting through this song makes me cringe. I’d be embarrassed if my friends abroad see or hear it.’
The lyric writer, veteran local playwright Haresh Sharma, could not be reached yesterday.
He is behind the script for this year’s NDP show segment, which will be staged as a 21/2-hour musical starring local artists Sharon Au and Timothy Nga.
Mr Sharma, 45, the resident playwright of theater company The Necessary Stage, has won multiple Best Script awards at the Life! Theater Awards.
Responding to queries from The Straits Times, NDP creative director Beatrice Chia-Richmond said every year, the NDP hosts introduce the items in the fun packs to spectators, and that the Fun Pack Song was “a fresh and light-hearted way to do so.”
It was penned to reflect the “musical concept of NDP 2011,” she added.
This year’s parade is organized by the Singapore Armed Forces’ Headquarters Singapore Combat Engineers, to the theme of ‘Majulah! The Singapore Spirit’. Majulah is Malay for ‘onward.’
Last year’s NDP creative director Dick Lee, 54, commented that the song may be ‘inappropriate’ for the nation’s birthday: ‘Why do we need to sing about biscuits, sweets and Newater? It’s not worth celebrating these items in a bag.’
Speaking to The Straits Times earlier yesterday, he had also raised the copyright issue.
“You cannot just take somebody’s hit song and change the lyrics. If I were Lady Gaga, I wouldn’t be very pleased,” said the musician and founder of production company Fantastic Entertainment.
Just by chance, Lady Gaga, 25, will be here tomorrow to perform Bad Romance and her other hits as part of an exclusive showcase for more than 2,000 SingTel customers.
They performed the ditty, called the Fun Pack Song, once at last Saturday’s rehearsal for the parade, and had planned to repeat it for the pre-parade segment on Aug 9.
The clip of the performance of the song, which modifies the lyrics of Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, has gone viral and been panned by netizens on YouTube.
Last night, the parade organizers said they had secured the public performance permit for a series of songs, including that hit.
‘But we did not realize that the rights obtained did not include rights to modify the lyrics of the song. We are currently working to rectify this,’ said the chairman of the NDP show segment, Col. Ong Tze-Ch’in, in a statement on Tuesday night.
The Defense Ministry had issued the statement in response to The Straits Times’ queries about the video clip.
Netizens have panned the Fun Pack Song as ‘unoriginal,’ ‘a disgrace’ and ‘absolute rubbish,’ among other things.
As at 12.30 a.m. this morning, the video had garnered more than 17,000 views, with more than 70 ‘likes’, more than 2,000 ‘dislikes’ and close to 900 comments. Video clips of other segments of last Saturday’s rehearsal that were put up on YouTube the same day attracted 3,000 views at most by late last night.
Undergraduate Low Wei Xiang, 22, said NDP organizers are ‘trying too hard to reach out to the young and look cool’.
The Nanyang Technological University student added: ‘Sitting through this song makes me cringe. I’d be embarrassed if my friends abroad see or hear it.’
The lyric writer, veteran local playwright Haresh Sharma, could not be reached yesterday.
He is behind the script for this year’s NDP show segment, which will be staged as a 21/2-hour musical starring local artists Sharon Au and Timothy Nga.
Mr Sharma, 45, the resident playwright of theater company The Necessary Stage, has won multiple Best Script awards at the Life! Theater Awards.
Responding to queries from The Straits Times, NDP creative director Beatrice Chia-Richmond said every year, the NDP hosts introduce the items in the fun packs to spectators, and that the Fun Pack Song was “a fresh and light-hearted way to do so.”
It was penned to reflect the “musical concept of NDP 2011,” she added.
This year’s parade is organized by the Singapore Armed Forces’ Headquarters Singapore Combat Engineers, to the theme of ‘Majulah! The Singapore Spirit’. Majulah is Malay for ‘onward.’
Last year’s NDP creative director Dick Lee, 54, commented that the song may be ‘inappropriate’ for the nation’s birthday: ‘Why do we need to sing about biscuits, sweets and Newater? It’s not worth celebrating these items in a bag.’
Speaking to The Straits Times earlier yesterday, he had also raised the copyright issue.
“You cannot just take somebody’s hit song and change the lyrics. If I were Lady Gaga, I wouldn’t be very pleased,” said the musician and founder of production company Fantastic Entertainment.
Just by chance, Lady Gaga, 25, will be here tomorrow to perform Bad Romance and her other hits as part of an exclusive showcase for more than 2,000 SingTel customers.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment