Life Listens: Charlie Lim releases acoustic version of NDP theme song in honour of late teen

SINGAPORE – In this monthly column, The Straits Times curates the most buzz-worthy music released in the past month.

Singapore Scene: Charlie Lim – Here We Are (Elijah’s Version)

Home-grown singer-songwriter Charlie Lim has released a solo acoustic version of the 2025 National Day Parade (NDP) theme song Here We Are.

Dubbed Elijah’s Version, this rendition is dedicated to the memory of the late Elijah Ng, a Singaporean teenager who was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of bone cancer at the age of 12 in 2023. He died on July 25.

One of the boy’s last wishes was to hear 2025’s NDP song, so Lim would visit him and play the new arrangement in private bedside performances.

Lim wrote on social media: “The weeks leading up to National Day in August became a strange, surreal experience for me – going between performing the theme song to 30,000 people at the Padang during the weekends to playing it quietly at Elijah’s bedside, with friends and family circled around. The song began to carry a new meaning far beyond anything I could’ve imagined.”

He added: “Despite the pain and long hospital stays, Elijah’s life shone brightly. He was gentle, cheeky and inquisitive.”

The latest version of Here We Are, which feels a lot more intimate and personal, features just Lim singing, without local Mandopop singer Kit Chan and vocal group The Island Voices, who join Lim on the original track.

To honour Elijah, Lim has started a donation campaign for the Children’s Cancer Foundation (go to

str.sg/46xFf

). All proceeds from the streams and purchases of the song will go to the same cause.

In a Facebook post on Sept 25, Singapore diplomat and Ambassador-at-Large Tommy Koh praised the move as “heartwarming”.

“Charlie made his wish come true by going to the hospital and singing to him,” Professor Koh wrote. “Thank you Charlie for what you did for Elijah.”

Must-see MV: Lady Gaga – The Dead Dance

With Halloween around the corner, the American pop star’s horror glam-themed music video helmed by Hollywood director Tim Burton for The Dead Dance arrives at an appropriate time.

The upbeat, disco-inspired song is included in the digital reissue of her sixth album Mayhem, first released in March.

Gaga and Burton are both widely known for their love of gothic imagery and all things macabre, so it is a wonder they have never collaborated until now.

In early September, the singer made a much-hyped, albeit brief, cameo as psychic Nevermore teacher Rosaline Rotwood opposite American actress Jenna Ortega’s titular protagonist in the second season of Netflix mystery series Wednesday (2022 to present). Burton is an executive producer and the director for several episodes.

The show’s characters Enid (Emma Myers) and Agnes (Evie Templeton) also dance to the track in a gala sequence.

A seeming nod to American pop king Michael Jackson’s iconic music video for Thriller (1983), the MV features Gaga styled as a cracked porcelain doll dancing among other ghoulish masked figures. It even boasts the same jerky, zombie-like movements from Jackson’s classic and oft-imitated Thriller dance choreography.

The video was filmed on the notorious Isla de las Munecas, or Island of the Dolls, an island near Mexico City where hundreds of dolls hang from the trees, adding to the eerie vibe.

Creepy aesthetic aside, the song itself is an empowering anthem about bouncing back from a despairing break-up and returning to life, thanks to the power of music and dance.

Chart Champ: Sabrina Carpenter – Man’s Best Friend

American pop star Sabrina Carpenter is on a winning streak. Her seventh album has gone straight to No. 1 on the US Billboard charts, repeating the feat achieved by her previous album Short N’ Sweet (2024).

According to Billboard, Man’s Best Friend also logged her biggest first-week performance, moving 366,000 equivalent album units compared with Short N’ Sweet’s 362,000 units.

Man’s Best Friend also topped the charts in many countries, including Britain and Australia.

The 12-track work includes the single Manchild, which went to No. 1 on Billboard’s singles charts when it dropped in June.

Like her previous releases, Man’s Best Friend is cheeky and full of innuendo. The often explicit lyrics can get a little tiresome, but the saving grace is her self-awareness.

There is humour in tunes like When Did You Get Hot? and Never Getting Laid, but Carpenter also gets introspective in Nobody’s Son, which explores concepts such as not living up to expectations.

Overall, Man’s Best Friend is pop gold. The songs are buoyed by irresistible grooves, strong hooks and melodies, traversing genres ranging from disco-pop and R&B to funk and country.

Stream This Song: Ed Sheeran – Azizam

If you are an Ed Sheeran fan, his eighth album Play hits all the right notes and treads familiar ground – romantic, sentimental and chock-full of soaring melodies.

But what makes it stand out from the English singer-songwriter’s previous full-length releases are the Indian rhythms and instrumentation, as well as the Persian influences peppered throughout.

Azizam (Persian for my dear or my darling) is a standout dance-pop tune that borrows heavily from traditional Persian music.

Lifted by exuberant beats and a stadium-worthy chorus, the track – a collaboration between Sheeran and Iran-born producer Ilya Salmanzadeh – includes instruments such as the daf, a type of Iranian drum.

It is a refreshing return to outsized pop tunes made for the dancing crowd by Sheeran, especially after the mellow, acoustic direction of his previous two albums Subtract and Autumn Variations, both released in 2023.

Play is also the first of a new series of albums named after media player controls that replace his previous albums named after mathematical symbols.

To mark the album release in Singapore, an event dubbed Ed Sheeran’s Play @ Gardens by the Bay: A Supertree Light & Music Experience was held on Sept 13 and 14 that saw the new songs being played among the attraction’s Supertrees.

Ace Album: Hayley Williams – Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party

As the frontwoman of pop-punk/emo trailblazers Paramore, American singer-songwriter Hayley Williams is no stranger to confessional and raw lyrics. In her third solo album, Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party, she takes it up a notch with her most unfiltered and gut-wrenching lyrics to date, delving into issues such as broken relationships, mental issues and despair.

Perhaps it is a result of her newfound independence, as Williams and Paramore parted ways with their former major label Atlantic Records in 2023. Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party is released under her own newly formed label, cheekily named Post Atlantic.

The 18-track album contains her most varied genre experimentations to date, a mix of the art-pop tendencies in solo debut Petals For Armor (2020) and the tender and intimate sounds of Flowers For Vases / Descansos (2021). She sings and plays several instruments such as guitar, drums and keyboards, and there is very little sign of Paramore’s early rock edge.

Parachute alludes to her failed marriage (“You were at my wedding... You could’ve told me not to do it”), while Kill Me touches on generational trauma (“Carrying my mother’s mother’s torment/I think I’m where the bloodline ends”) and Negative Self Talk is as the title suggests – an unflinching exploration of her state of mind.