Singapore — Netizens have found a plagiarised version of the Singapore National Day Song ‘Count on me Singapore‘. The altered song titled ‘We Can Achieve‘ is now used as a patriotic song in India.
“We have a goal for Mother India/ We can achieve, we can achieve” this lyrics are written, copying the lyrics from the 1986 Singapore National Day song.
However, every mention of ‘Singapore’ was replaced with “India”. The song title was also changed to “We can achieve” instead of the familiar ‘Count on me‘
This new rendition of the song started popping up in 2020, with postings on YouTube starting as early as May 11, 2020.
Other instances of this song include a cover by singers, as well as covers created by various schools in India.
These three-minute replicas of the Singaporean song are currently trending, with many of the covers removing their videos or turning off comments due to overwhelming response from Singaporeans reclaiming the National Day theme song. A number of uploads have also been taken down.
The Singapore National Day theme song was released in 1986, composed by Hugh Harrison, and sung by singer-songwriter Clement Chow.
Writer Hugh Harrison shares that inspiration for this song came from a vision: “On the plane from Hong Kong to Singapore, I had a vision of young people standing together resolutely shouting to their leaders ‘You can count on us!'” he shared in 2013.
Many netizens are expressing their discontent at the song being blatantly used without credit back to the original artist. Others are more amused at how the song was used, and even sharing how the song must have been ‘so fantastic for it to be copied’.
When checked on Wednesday (March 10), there was no mention of the original Singapore version. However, the most popular video has edited the upload to include credit back to the original song when checked on Friday (March 12).
Denise Teh is an intern at The Independent SG. /TISG