Cover Cultural icon Dick Lee (Photo: mm2 Entertainment)
Cultural icon Dick Lee (Photo: mm2 Entertainment)
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As Singapore celebrates its 60th birthday, cultural icon Dick Lee unveils “SingaPop!”—a bold, immersive tribute to the nation’s evolving identity told through six decades of pop culture
It begins not with a declaration, but with a question: what does it mean to be Singaporean? For Dick Lee, that exploration has underscored every lyric, every performance, every sartorial decision across his more than five‑decade career. And now, it takes centre stage in SingaPop! 60 Years of Singapore Pop Culture—an exhibition that marks the nation’s 60th birthday with a heartfelt tribute to the people, stories and idiosyncrasies that have shaped contemporary Singapore.
“I realised early on that I needed to make music as a Singaporean,” Lee reflects. “But I didn’t understand what that meant. It wasn’t clear when I was starting out.” The 1970s Singapore he came of age in—just a decade past independence—had yet to coalesce around a sense of national identity. “People weren’t interested in defining ourselves as Singaporean,” he says. “But through my life and my work, I’ve been observing the evolution of our psyche.”
Read also: Home is where the heart is: The secret behind Dick Lee’s enduring legacy
Above "SingaPop! 60 Years of Singapore Pop Culture" (Photo: Marina Bay Sands)
"SingaPop! 60 Years of Singapore Pop Culture" (Photo: Marina Bay Sands)
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That quiet but insistent observation now takes form in SingaPop!, co-presented by the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands. Opening on August 2 and running until December 28, the exhibition is more than a retrospective, it unfolds as a personal, often tongue-in-cheek meditation on identity, channelled through the lens of pop culture. From Singlish and hawker fare to music, film, fashion, and even the annual National Day Parade (NDP), for which Lee has been creative director multiple times, it celebrates the cultural markers that give Singapore its distinct voice. “It’s not academic,” Lee is quick to clarify of his first foray into exhibition-making. “It’s a celebration. A bit of an amusement park of Singaporean-ness.”
Curated in five thematic chapters and anchored by an immersive finale, SingaPop! is a world where nostalgia meets wit. It brings together defining figures from Singapore’s music, media and entertainment scenes, including vocal powerhouse Kit Chan, comedy icon Kumar, legendary songstress Rahimah Rahim, and even the beloved Singa the Kindness Lion mascot.
Above "Singapop!" creative director Dick Lee and Honor Harger, vice president of ArtScience Museum (Photo: Marina Bay Sands)
"Singapop!" creative director Dick Lee and Honor Harger, vice president of ArtScience Museum (Photo: Marina Bay Sands)
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The evolution of Singapore’s sonic identity can be heard through an interactive jukebox featuring 1960s trailblazers such as The Quests and The Crescendos, alongside contemporary stars including Stefanie Sun, JJ Lin, Shabir and Sezairi. In the screening room, seminal films and television dramas take the spotlight, from Mee Pok Man (1995) by Eric Khoo and Money No Enough (1998) by Jack Neo to Under One Roof (1995) and Phua Chu Kang (1997). Archival fashion, culinary nods, and the twang of a local accent are woven throughout, alongside playful digital and interactive touchpoints. Plus, a bespoke soundtrack by Lee’s long‑time collaborator and music producer Bang Wenfu provides an aural through line, culminating in a stirring, chronological audiovisual montage.
This is a show about how we sound, how we speak, how we dress and how we celebrate. It’s about the vivid, particular texture of daily life that binds our city-state together,” says Honor Harger, vice president of the ArtScience Museum. “It’s our ode to the spirit of invention and expression that continues to shape Singapore’s identity.”
Read more: ArtScience Museum unveils innovative new season and exhibitions for 2025
Above SingaSong features an interactive jukebox experience that features local music across the decades (Photo: Marina Bay Sands)
SingaSong features an interactive jukebox experience that features local music across the decades (Photo: Marina Bay Sands)
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Above SingaStories immersive projection room experience (Photo: Marina Bay Sands)
SingaStories immersive projection room experience (Photo: Marina Bay Sands)
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More than its curation, SingaPop! resonates because it comes from someone who has lived—and shaped—this history. From Fried Rice Paradise in the 1970s to Beauty World in the ’80s, Lee was often the lone flag-bearer for local pop culture, particularly in music, long before it was deemed viable. “When I first used Singlish in 1974, my song [Fried Rice Paradise] was banned [from Singapore radio],” he recalls. “They didn’t even see it as Singlish. They saw it as bad English.” 15 years later, Rasa Sayang [from the album The Mad Chinaman] would face the same fate. “But the media supported me. The ban was lifted, and the album went platinum.”
The success of that record—and its multicultural spirit—propelled Lee to Japan, and later to the heart of Hong Kong’s golden age of Cantopop. “It had Malay songs, Chinese elements … my mother even sings on it,” he says of The Mad Chinaman. “For the first time, you could hear what Singapore was.”
Above SingaStyle presents pageant wear from 2013 to 2022 by local designers Frederick Lee and Moe Kasim (Photo: Marina Bay Sands)
Above SingaMakan is a tribute to hawker culture's evolution across time (Photo: Marina Bay Sands)
SingaStyle presents pageant wear from 2013 to 2022 by local designers Frederick Lee and Moe Kasim (Photo: Marina Bay Sands)
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That sense of Singaporean-ness lies at the heart of SingaPop!: a desire to illuminate what already lives within the nation’s cultural DNA. The exhibition also seeks to spark intergenerational dialogue and, perhaps, inspire Singaporeans to recognise their role in a story still unfolding. “I want the younger generation to come and see how far we’ve come—and that this is who we are,” says Lee. “And for the older generation, my peers—I want them to remember that we were, and still are, part of this journey.”
Perhaps the most moving moment in SingaPop! is one that requires neither visual spectacle nor archival footage. It is, Lee reflects, the realisation that Home—his enduring 1997 composition first performed by Kit Chan at the 1998 NDP—has woven itself into Singapore’s collective memory. “I wrote a Singapore song—and through that, I feel genuinely Singaporean.”
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Above NDPop room traces the evolution of the National Day Parade since 1966 (Photo: Marina Bay Sands)
NDPop room traces the evolution of the National Day Parade since 1966 (Photo: Marina Bay Sands)
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This August—coincidentally his birthday month—Lee returns to the NDP on August 9, performing We Will Get There, the first song he wrote for National Day, sung by Stefanie Sun at the 2002 edition. Just days later, a new musical production of Fried Rice Paradise opens on August 12. As he approaches 70 next year—with a birthday tribute concert in the works and multiple film and theatre projects underway, including a new children’s musical loosely inspired by the legends of Singapore—Lee shows no signs of slowing down.
In a sense, SingaPop! is a culmination not just of Lee’s career, but of the broader arc of Singapore’s creative consciousness. It captures a nation still defining—and refining—its voice, but no longer afraid to make it heard. And like all enduring pop culture, it leaves not a conclusion, but a chorus: This is us. This is who we are.
As Senior Editor of Tatler Singapore, Hashirin champions and refines the storytelling across platforms—curating and crafting compelling profiles, cover stories and features that spotlight visionaries shaping culture, business and impact. Driven by curiosity, she draws inspiration from the artists, changemakers and trailblazers she encounters through her work. Beyond the pages of Tatler, she is an avid supporter of local theatre and delights in seeking out art in every city she visits.
