Ask YES 933 jock Hazelle Teo if she’s hooked on producing Chinese New Year songs, and the answer would be yes.
Last year, the 30-year-old released her first CNY single, ‘SING A 龙 Dance A 龙’ (‘龙‘ is pronounced ‘Long’ in Mandarin), and the song’s music video has over 270K views on YouTube to date.
It was a passion project for Hazelle, who spent some S$40K on the whole production.
Given how tough it was to bring the project to fruition, Hazelle had no plans to do another song… until some of her listeners told her their kids were still listening to the song months after CNY.
Which brings us to Hazelle’s CNY single for 2025 ‘Aiyo, It’s the New Year — Don’t Be So Lazy’’
The song and its music video, which drops today (Dec 26) at 8pm on Hazelle’s YouTube page, is inspired by the relationship dynamics between mothers and daughters.
Hazelle penned the lyrics with her mum in mind, hence the lines include questions her mum would always ask, including “Have you combed your hair?” and “Have you ironed your clothes?”.
Hazelle tells 8days.sg: “I didn’t let my mum hear the song until two days before Christmas because I wanted to capture her reaction on video. After she saw the music video, the first thing she said was: “I want to watch it again!” I am still her baby girl even at 30.”
She also managed to rope in former Mediacorp actress Chen Huihui, 58, to play her mum in the video.
Turns out, Hazelle only wanted Chen Huihui and no one else for the role. “I really lucked out,” she tells us.
Hazelle got Huihui’s contact from Hong Huifang when the latter appeared on her HTHT talk show series. Within the first minute of dropping Huihui a text, Hazelle got a reply.
“Her first response was “I’m very honoured” and then “What do I have to do?” recalls Hazelle. “Without waiting for me to reply, [Huihui] said, “I don’t know how to dance”. I told her there was no dancing involved, and she immediately blocked out the shoot dates for me. No further questions asked.”
As if Hazelle wasn’t already touched by how steady Huihui was. When Hazelle asked about what her rates would be for the shoot, Huihui replied with “anything you wish”. She understood that it was a passion project for Hazelle and wanted to help out in whichever way she could.
“Of course, I gave her an ang pow at the end!” said Hazelle.“After the whole experience [Hui Hui] came back to me to say she’s never done a shoot like this, she had so much fun and couldn’t wait for the video to drop. I almost teared up.”