No place I'd rather be

Dick Lee points that some NDP songs are just crap, but my friend the Samurai Blogger points out that this year's NDP song by Kit Chan is really the pits. I'm of the opinion that anyone who watched the National Day broadcast must be working off some serious karma.

Today, though, for your pleasure (or not), we have a youtube clip of No Place I'd Rather Be, lyrics by Jimmy Ye.



Contrast this with The Duprees singing You Belong To Me.



The Samurai rightly points out the poverty of imagination behind the lyrics of our NDP - it is no more and no less than a second-rate, third-hand reworking of the lyrics of You Belong To Me. I believe, though, that the point isn't about the lack of originality of NDP songs, or their derivativeness. To arrive at an understanding of the true weakness of Kit Chan's NDP, we must adopt a very close examination of its text and that of its possible ancestor.

The lyrics of both songs share the same strategy: No matter where you go, your home will always be here. No matter how awed you are, or sold on the idea that you just might have a happier life elsewhere, your home is here. There's not other place you should be, because you belong here.

Now, for some reason, You Belong To Me is seen as a love song, while No Place I'd rather be is supposed to be a patriotic NDP song. But to me, the possessiveness and the "I don't care where you've been, you belong to me" thematic refrain of the first song puts it down as the anthem of a wife abuser rather than a lover, and from the other end, Kit Chan's No Place I'd Rather Be, comes across as the anthem of the abused wife, coming back for more.