Circuit Breaker
The “Circuit Breaker” song project came together as the result of several experiences that I believe are characteristic of an MBA year at INSEAD:
- Dinner table banter: After dinner one day, my roommates were listening to me Youtube-karaoke (we were no longer able to go out for karaoke due to the lockdown in Singapore a.k.a. "circuit breaker"). I started making up silly lyrics that were related to COVID, and my roommates (Elizabeth and Jiwon) also started throwing out ideas for words and puns until we had written several verses.
- MBA travel friendships: One of the first trips we took this year was to Hoi An at the end of January. Charlie, Sanskriti and I got to know each other better on this trip, and we realised that we all enjoyed singing and talked about doing a collaboration together. Bonus fun fact: we even belted out tunes together as we rode on a bike tour around Hoi An!
- Shared hobbies as inspiration: Miao has been putting together music collaborations from very early on, sharing potential violin and piano pieces with me and posting other musical creations that he’d been working on. His dedication to making music, especially with other INSEADers, really inspired us to finally take the next step to actually get started on this collaboration.
With the perfect mix of the above three events, we formed a “Circuit Breaker” Telegram group to begin collaborating on the actual song via various recordings.
Creating the video was the hardest part – I wanted to include as many classmates as possible, but also wanted to keep it a surprise, so huge thanks to everyone who trustingly submitted “photos wearing face masks” or OK-ed their photos being used without knowing the purpose!
All of us hope that this video serves as a reminder of the relationships that we were able to build this year before COVID-19 impacted our experiences.
Despite now being strewn all across the globe, we hope that this piece brings us together again – virtually – to share the memories we have of this unusual year as the class of '20D in Singapore.
