‘Harder to sing’: Music industry veterans Dick Lee and Jeremy Monteiro weigh in on NDP 2026 songs debate

He acknowledged one of the more common criticisms: that some newer NDP songs are harder for large crowds to sing.

“Some of the newer songs are genuinely harder to sing. That complaint is fair,” he wrote. “They are often written for trained voices, with intervals and runs that suit a soloist on a stage more than a crowd on a field, and many of us in the older generation simply cannot get our voices around them.”

But Monteiro argued that this does not necessarily mean the songs have failed to connect with younger Singaporeans.

He pointed to younger songwriters and performers behind more recent NDP songs, including The Road Ahead in 2021, Not Alone in 2024 and Here We Are in 2025, and argued that younger Singaporeans are more comfortable with the musical language of these songs.

“Our young people can sing them. Easily, from memory, with feeling, because that is the musical language they grew up speaking,” he wrote.

He compared this with the way songs such as Stand Up For Singapore resonated with his own generation.

His broader point was that NDP songs, like Singapore’s musical tastes, will inevitably evolve and that younger voices are crucial to shape that soundtrack.