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Saturday, December 14, 2013

Complaints Choirs part three

Continued from Part One and Part Two.

The story of the Singapore Complaint Choir is poignant. The founders decided to attempt creating this event even though they were warned off in advance by the government, which sent them an email with guidelines including "No promotion of non-mainstream lifestyle; no complaining about generally accepted community standards."

In the end, the government would not allow any performances because there were Malaysians in the 60-member group (including the conductor). Here is the song they would have performed.

Singapore Complaint Choir Anthem

We get fined for almost anything
Drivers won't give chance when you want to change lane
The indoors are cold, the outdoors are hot;
And the humid air, it wrecks my hair
Those answering machines always make you hold
Only to hang up on you

When a pregnant lady gets on the train
Everyone pretends to be asleep
I'm stuck with my parents till I'm 35
We don't recycle any plastic bags

Chorus:
What's wrong with Singapore?
Losing always makes me feel so sore
Cause if you're not the best
Then you're just one of the rest

My oh my Singapore
What exactly are we voting for?
What's not expressly permitted
is prohibited

When I'm hungry at the food court, I see
People chope seats with their tissue paper
To the auntie staying upstairs:
Your laundry's dripping on my bed sheets
Please don't squat on the toilet seats
And don't clip your nails on MRT

Stray cats get into noisy affairs
At night my neighbor makes weird animal sounds
People put on fake accents to sound posh
And queue up 3 hours for donuts

Singaporeans too kiasu! (so scared to lose)
Singaporeans too kiasi! (so scared to die)
Singaporeans too kiabor! (scared of their wives)
Maybe we're just too stressed out! (even the kids)

Singapore's national bird is the crane (the one with yellow steel girders)
Real estate agents' leaflets clogging up my mailbox (en bloc, en bloc, en bloc, en bloc)
Why can't we be buried when we die?
No one wants to climb Bukit Timah with me

*chorus

There are not enough public holidays
My neighbor sings all night
Wedding dinners never start on time
My hair is always cut shorter than I want
Channel 5 commercials are way too long
Why do men turn bald?

We have to pay for tap water at restaurants
All the bus stops have tilted benches
We cannot access playboy.com

Here are a couple more I liked. There are new ones every year.

Complaints choir of UmeƄ

Complaints choir of Ljubljana


At Complaints Choirs of the World you can find information about all complaints choirs that have been initiated around the world. You can also submit information about an upcoming choir, find fellow complainers and vote for your favourite complaints choir. They don't appear to be updating their website.

From the Times Online:
Chorus of disapproval: the complaints choir
There are choirs who sing fugues on the theme of "food has no taste any more" and yodel to "I can't stop thinking about sex." They chant about tatty bus stops and harmonise on the insufficient length of their vacuum-cleaner cord. In fact, every tedious aspect of modern life has probably passed the lips of a complaints choir, a new kind of performance art that is noisily taking root across the world....

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