The NEA has been organising one of the biggest nationwide songwriting competitions, the Eco Music Challenge, for the past few years. As part of the judging panel for 2014, I was excited to hear the final entries.
And they did not fail, in fact the panel (Jack Ho, Clement Chow, Danny Loong and I) had quite a tough time deciding on the winners!
Congratulations to Michael Kek and Relyne Ban for winning the top prize with their Mandarin original “手牵手” (mentored by Ruth Ling):
The rest of the contestants did a great job with their originals, really. There were pop, slow rock (even reminding me of U2), and funk! The standard was much higher than I expected, and I’m comforted that Singapore is grooming a great talent pool in songwriting. Hooray to all the contestants!
