SINGAPORE : Half a million dollars – that’s how much a forgotten lyric might cost you if you are a contestant on new Channel 5 game show, “Don’t Forget the Lyrics”.
Hosted by local celebrity, Gurmit Singh, contestants are required to sing out – karaoke style – the words to fill in the blanks in the song. And if you can keep singing it right for 10 songs, you’ll walk away with S$500,000!
Easy peasy you say? Well, not quite.
“These people who come along thinking they know the song and when the music stops, the lyrics go away, they get stumped!” Gurmit said.
“My theory is this, when people see blanks, dashes, their minds go blank as well.”
Each game consists of three tiers which are divided into nine levels. The difficulty of the challenge increases with each tier and the tiers dictate how many blank lyrics contestants have to remember and sing within a stipulated time.
Contestants have to get every exact lyric correct to pass the stage, and like “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”, they can get help if they wish to.
Each contestant is entitled to three lifelines also known as “backups” that they can use when they are stuck at any point of the competition. But each backup can only be used once.
“Backup Singer” allows the contestant to bring a friend or family member on stage to help sing the missing lyrics.
If contestants opt for “Two Words”, they can choose any two words they have filled in to check if they are right.
The last, “3 Lines”, allows contestants to pick the correct answer from three multiple choice options.
“Every time you answer correctly, you keep going up (the different levels), higher and higher. But every time you lock in the words and they are wrong, any single word, any single punctuation is wrong, you go to either zero or S$10,000 threshold level,” Gurmit explained.
The game show also features celebrity contestants like MediaCorp actresses Fiona Xie and Jade Seah, characters from Channel 5 sitcoms such as Phua Chu Kang (Gurmit Singh), Sergeant Dollah (Suhaimi Yusof), Adrianna Wow and Barbarella Chanel (both played by Michelle Chong) and even “Singapore Idol” winners Taufik Batisah and Hady Mirza, as well as runner-up Jonathan Leong.
But the one to look out for is actress Andrea Fonseka who is “really good”. “She knows many songs, she’s like a walking encyclopedia,” said Gurmit.
“Don’t Forget the Lyrics” premiered last year in the United States, and Singapore is the 30th country in the world to showcase the popular game show. It premieres Thursday, 27 November, at 8pm on MediaCorp’s Channel 5.
– CNA/km
Channel News Asia