So much for “new year, new me”. Mediacorp didn’t even give a chance for us to be positive, hopeful individuals in the lead up to the new year, thanks to what could arguably be the cringe-iest televised performance to grace Channel 5 in the last few hours of 2017.
In what was described as the “glitziest” countdown celebration in the country, Mediacorp’s Celebrate 2018 Party With The Stars upped the ante with a celebrity-studded soirée that featured dozens of TV, radio, and music personalities from Singapore and the region. The likes of Taufik Batisah, The Sam Willows, The Muttons and more graced Mediacorp’s first ever New Year programme at its campus along Stars Avenue — and considering the amount of money thrown into the whole shebang, it probably was a doozy for those in attendance.
But like the year that came before (shout out to OG Ganesh), it was absolutely mandatory that the live telecast of the countdown show had to come with a cringe-worthy highlight. Celebrate 2018 upped the celeb factor, but it sure did the same when it came to mortifying the audience at home. The players: B-tier EDM duo Rave Republic, young violin virtuoso Shalynn Tsai, and Malay pop singer Aisyah Aziz. Separately, they might have been perfectly decent (and even considered pretty good) on their own — but combined to perform a plastic performance for wholesome TV, the results were, ironically, the opposite of a symphony.
It was a performance that was enough to sober anyone who built up an appropriate state of inebriation to usher in the new year. The chorus provided a shrill siren, a death knell for the end of a tiring year. Awkward attempts behind the DJ console to hype up the dance floor rang hollow on screen, as the camera selectively panned to the small, excitable pockets of the crowd.
Mediacorp’s jazzing up of its countdown party with a poppy, badly-orchestrated EDM fusion translated to yet another signal of how outdated ideas continue to persist in local broadcasting networks. Even Rave Republic couldn’t wait to get the fuck out of the stage at the end.
But hey, don’t just take our word for it — take the word of dozens of other people who just can’t even with the performance. RIP 2017.
