Why the Singapore’s NDP song, “Home” from 1998 works (and not NDP 2017’s theme song)
While I was eating a fried chicken rice bowl at Suntec City on Saturday, there was a loud National Day promotion event trying to get the citizens of Singapore hyped for our 52nd National Day. What was strange though, that after all the hoo-ha about 2017 and making children guess the theme and theme song name, there was then an insert performance, an acoustic rendition of Home; the one song that seemed to touch every Singaporean’s heart after nearly a good 2 decades since it’s inception.
Instead of “Because It’s Singapore”, the song specially written for this year, we are still belting out this slightly melancholy yet hopeful song about home. But, out of curiousity, I decided to transpose the first verse and chorus, wondering if my rather limited knowledge of music theory could help understand why this song just works.

From the get go, after labelling all the chords, it is a work of art, an economy of musical ideas put together into an elegant piece of music. Let’s examine this portion by portion, and I’ll try my best to explain it in layman’s terms enough. All you need to remember, are the chord notations and how they sound like:
I, IV, V: capital Roman numerals, are happy chords
ii, iii, vi: undercased Roman numerals, are sad chords

The song starts unusually lingering on the root chord (I). This is where our song resides, the basic chord that we will always return to whereever we may go. All music today follows this natural law: Go back to the root (I), for we must have a reference point for everything else and a place to go home to.
However, after lingering for 2 bars, the song actually begins by introducing a different chord at every bar, a stable progression which leads to some very interesting chord choices (IVb and vi), highlighted by the green; these chords sound almost alike, and they have a tinge of sadness in them, for the vi chord is a minor chord. IVb shares some of the sadder notes with vi, and hence a slight play of emotion occurs in the blue bits, when a sad chord follows to the V chord, the dominant chord which wants to usher us back home, to the root.
Ignoring the highlighted red bit for later, let’s bring to attention the wonderful use of a descending/ascending baseline, denoted by the purple arrows. Most music you hear today, unconciously uses such baselines to ground you into the musical idea presented. It allows us to relate nicely from chord to chord without jumping about too much. When the baseline starts jumping, things get exciting.

As we go to the chorus, the baseline jumps (in the top blue area) signalling upheaval. The previous notes still apply: blue areas are sad chords preceeded by a V chord going to root, the green chords sound alike yet play a different magnitude of sadness (compared like the sorrow of a broken heart, to listless melancholy), and the purple arrows signal a decending baseline.
The real interesting part, is the red highlighted part, where the song artfully brings an idea from the 1st verse and replays it for us, chord by chord, in the chorus, as though as we are already Home. However, the red part is only the left hand, the right hand’s melody recontextualizes it ever so slightly with tension from the Vb chord after I-V-IVb. This Vb chord, a stroke of genius or sheer luck by the composer, sounds like an unresolved poem, needing another line to complete it’s almost wistful tone.

The chorus is ending, and here’s the build up to a elongated vi chord (remember it sounds sad!) The baseline following upwards but not jumping, remaining stable to usher us properly into the hold. Here, the composer could resolve the sad sounding chord naturally into a V-I, but not without a tiny IV chord fitted inbetween for a little extra hope and ray of sunshine.

When I mentioned about the economy of musical ideas, this is what I meant:
Musical ideas are reused but recontextualized.
Ambiguous chords that sound like other chords are used to give a ‘lost yet maybe’ feeling.
A stable baseline and chord ideas keep the song rooted firmly within our mind.
A little more technical, but the blue bits with a minor chord followed by V-I, all appear just before introducing/reintroducing a musical idea.
2017’s NDP have this however, and by my ears and many others, people are a little critical about it:
For the heck of it, I went ahead and transposed it as well, and during the transposition, I could already tell, this wasn’t a well written piece of music on a fundamental level:

And I went ahead with the same level of analysis; it’s devoid of the creativity and elegant beauty of Home.

The baseline is still there, denoted by the dotted arrow. The rhythm is stable, but the strength of this baseline is weaken considerably by the strongest note (the note that tells us what chord is it in) just off the strong beat, or the first beat of every bar. Leading to a floaty feeling, the song tries it’s best to present its ideas through it’s lofty slow flow of chords.
If there’s a good part, is that the idea from the first 8 bars, get’s reused for the 2nd half of the first verse. That’s unity! The blue bit is sad chords preceding a V-I. However, our ushering chord, V, is a little slow in bring us back home, and the music feels a little odd, like it’s a little too slow.
However, upon reaching the chorus, it then proceeds to fall apart:

The baseline halts its march for a more Pop friendly vibe, but with that completely forgets to maintain a descending/ascending baseline that make the music feels lost. It also abandons all the ideas in the verse for it’s own special chorus, erasing any hope of unification other than the fact that they are in the same key.
The circled darker red parts are largely problematic areas, because so far there are usually just 1 chord per bar, sometimes that chord elongates through 2 bars, and the chorus is causing turbulence by introducing 2 chords fighting for airtime in the song.
The song also spends an amazing amount of time on V chords, which may work if we were trying to get a glorious mood going; however the song lacks that contrast of glory/despair, resulting in a flat sounding ‘hurrah’ when it finally reaches the chords.

When music resolves, it needs time to pack up the idea and close the door for the next idea. This song however, makes a very strange decision on a very long hold on the V chord, resolving downwards to a IV chord.
That IV chord continues holding before it quickly resolves with a V-I, so quickly it sounds adrupt and incomplete. From an untrained ear it may sound like a IV-I resolution, which while may sound ‘correct’, lacks proper resolution, like there’s door still left open.

To think that the composer, Lee Wei Song, actually runs a school, I would like to hear his students’ works before they graduate. Because with these kind of bad practices, the song just sounds bad and uncatchy. The problems are compounded by:
-Uneven musical ideas
-Boring chord choices
-Poorly paced chord progression
-A lack of “flow” by lacking a strong baseline
The song, even without the lyrics, fails at being a nice song; the lack of chords pushing the song with ideas makes it sounds dull and uninspired from the lack of dynamicism of the melody. You need some sad chords to add to the contrast when you want to be happy. Quoting Billie Holiday:
You don’t know what Love is
Until you’ve learned the meaning of the blues
It is as though the song was rigidly forced to remain happy with a mandated amount of sadness before it must go back to happy, ending up in it sounding empty, a vessel just for patriotism to imprint her words unto the notes, lacking the ‘omph’ to make any lasting impact on first time listeners.
Songwriting is hard, I can tell you that, but with a critical eye (and ear), we can identify what can and can’t work with music theory, and simple chord relations; a little bit of restraint, but at the same time, the courage to move the music through chords to introduce interesting ideas.
Music is the language of emotion, and if we can’t get that right in the first place, no amount of words would bring the message across.
