Lawrence Wong clarifies issue of song supposedly rejected by SG50

SINGAPORE - Ministers Lawrence Wong and Tan Chuan-Jin have praised an original song written for the SG50 celebrations and uploaded onto YouTube.

Titled 'As One', the song was uploaded by Sophie's World Productions in January.

Both Ministers praised the song in separate Facebook posts. Mr Wong said the song was "was very well-done and inspiring", while Mr Tan said that it was " a very nice song".

The Ministers also said they had received feedback that the song had been rejected as an official SG50 song because it was not written by a Singaporean.

Minister for Culture, Community and Youth Lawrence Wong said that he was initially puzzled by this and asked ministry staff to check on what happened. In his post, Mr Wong clarified that the song was submitted to MediaCorp, which held its own song competition with its own rules. "But competition aside, there's really no limitation on who can contribute songs or other materials for SG50," he said.

Minister for Manpower Tan Chuan-Jin said he received similar feedback and did not recall any song selection exercise run by the Government. " It did seem odd as I didn't recall any choosing of songs exercise. I checked with Lawrence and he has posted an update on his page," he said.

ljessica@sph.com.sg