Jack Neo Turns to AI to Compose His National Day Song — and Writes the Lyrics Himself

National Day songs are normally the work of professional composers and studios, but this year one of Singapore's best-known filmmakers is letting an AI handle the music. Jack Neo, the 66-year-old director behind the Money No Enough franchise, released a new National Day track called Singapore Is 61 on Aug 6 — and disclosed that the music was composed by generative AI while he wrote the lyrics himself.

It is the second time Neo has leaned on AI for a National Day song, following We Are Singapore in 2025, and the latest sign that AI tools are moving from novelty to normal in local creative production. The song reflects on Singapore's journey from a time "when we were deemed to have no future," touching on the country's political and economic stability and its birth rate. The music video also features AI-generated images of politicians, including Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, which Neo said were meant to be humorous rather than political commentary.

Neo's process is instructive for anyone using AI in creative work. He told Chinese-language daily Lianhe Zaobao that he had to constantly refine prompts because the AI "sometimes doesn't listen and acts on its own," and that the final product still required human editing. He deliberately kept lyric-writing human, arguing that AI-generated lyrics follow the same recognisable style — and that his own words, drawn from observations of Singapore society, are proof "we can definitely outdo AI."

The episode lands in the middle of a national conversation about AI and culture. Days earlier, a Singapore studio premiered an AI-generated short film depicting the National Day Parade under a zombie attack, and in July an AI-generated National Day banner in Bedok was pulled after errors sparked an AI-literacy debate. Neo's song frames the technology more pragmatically: AI as a production shortcut that still needs a human voice to carry meaning.

Why it matters for Singapore: Singapore has made AI adoption a national priority, but the creative sector is where the public experiences it most directly. A beloved filmmaker using AI for an NDP song — and openly discussing the prompting, editing, and quality trade-offs — models how professionals can treat AI as a collaborator rather than a replacement. As the country heads into National Day, it also shows that the AI conversation here has moved past dystopia-versus-utopia into something more practical: who writes the lyrics, and why that still matters.