Fried Rice Paradise was a song of mine from my 1974 first album, which was Life Story. And how that song came about was … you see, I was taking part in Talentime (a televised singing contest by the then Radio Television Singapore).
I was only 17, and that was when I started to write a lot of songs. And those songs that I wrote were largely inspired by my idol Elton John, and Joni Mitchell, you know, that kind of songs. But for the finals, I thought I wanted to do something very local, very Singaporean.
So I came up with Fried Rice Paradise, for the finals of the competition.
One of the judges in the finals was an EMI executive. And he thought that song was like brilliant and very different from anything else he had ever heard, so he signed me. And that’s how I got my first album, Life Story, with that song, Fried Rice Paradise in it.
Fried Rice Paradise, when it came out in 1974 was, well, to me it was just a way of expressing my Singaporean-ness right, but you know, RTS, in those days, banned the song. Because of the Singaporean-ness.
After that happened, I decided to bury my Singapore identity. I decided to become international.
And then I went to England to study, but… when I came back from London, when I started to do Bumboat! (a play for the 1984 Singapore Festival of Arts); I did my first album (for Warner Music) in 1984, Life in a Lion City. I decided to revive that Singaporean-ness.
But it didn’t work. It failed. Piracy had a lot do with it, and the fact that there was no interest from Singaporeans about being Singaporean. Nobody cared at all. The whole National Day campaign all hadn’t started yet. Stand Up for Singapore only appeared in ’84. And then the other songs followed—’85, ’86, ’87. So, in ’88, when Beauty World happened, and the Arts Festival was starting to become a Singaporean thing and the audience was starting to feel Singaporean, and Army Daze had some success, when Beauty World came out, everyone was ready to accept it. And so, that freed me.
Based on the success of Beauty World, I did (my album) The Mad Chinaman (1989). Which was totally Singaporean, and that was the thing that helped me go abroad, right? And that is why by the time I did Fried Rice Paradise (the musical, in 1991), I was totally… I mean, you talk about daring, I was like, don’t care already. The audience, I know they can accept it, they want it, I want to be as Singaporean as I possibly can, through my work.
We were very concerned that when you sing, it cannot suddenly be Queen’s English, and then when you talk, it’s different. So, we carried (the Singlish) through (into the music and lyrics) and that made it sound very Singaporean, I think.
