This is me waking up: Charlie Lim on leaving S'pore, writing the SG60 song while depressed, & finding love in home & family

You might know Charlie Lim as the guy behind the SG60 National Day theme song.

Lim released his first album, "TIME/SPACE", to glowing reviews in 2015. He performed in the 2018 National Day Parade, released a second (also well-received) album the same year, and was conferred with the prestigious Young Artist Award in 2021.

For a period of time, he was one of Singapore's brightest young stars in the music space. The world, it seemed, was his oyster.

But for a few years after, he effectively vanished. Until last year, when he emerged to pen the official theme song for SG60 — "Here We Are".

What happened?

The lowest point

In 2023, Lim moved to London.

Since his youth, he had a dream to make it big in the UK. It was his "musical mecca" in his youth — his favourite music was from there, his favourite artists.

After his first two albums, he felt like he'd done what he could in Singapore. The timing seemed right. He signed up for a course in music engineering.

And then Covid-19 hit.

By the time he finally made it to London, it was 2023. He was older, more jaded, and struggling with his mental health.

But he went anyway, in pursuit of that old dream.

It wasn't long before it all began to fall apart. Lim, who has bipolar disorder, found himself in the full throes of a severe manic depressive episode.

"I didn't realise how sick I was... I was just so depressed," he tells Mothership in a sit-down interview.

He battled self-destructive behaviour, was constantly anxious, and barely slept. He lashed out at his loved ones, strained his relationships.

At his lowest point, his marriage fell apart. Lim considered quitting music; he even thought about ending his life. His dream had become a nightmare.

Waking up

He decided he was done with London and its illusions. He flew to Australia, where his family lives, to spend more time with them.

"My parents helped so much. I don't even think they understood how best to help... [but] just being around them helped a lot," he says.

He stayed home, hung out with his young nieces, and played music — for fun, not for work.

It was then, he feels, that he began to regain a love for life and for music. He'd tied his identity to his work for so long; it was like being able to breathe again.

"I think [that time] really saved my life, to be honest," Lim tells me.

By the time he was ready to return home to Singapore, he'd decided to abandon his old dreams. Scrap all his previous projects, start afresh entirely.

That was when he got a call. It was Sydney Tan, veteran musician and longtime director of the National Day Parade.

He'd called to ask Lim to join as the assistant music director for SG60.

Song of the times

At first, Lim was unsure if he was ready.

"It was a big task to take on. Could I deal with it, on top of my mental health and everything I was going through?" he asked himself.

He decided he felt stable enough to do it. As it turned out, the work helped anchor him. It was the fresh start he'd been searching for, a new purpose.

"And then a few months later, they were like, 'hey, you want to give the song a go?'"

Lim hadn't signed up for writing the NDP theme song, and he didn't know if he was prepared for it. But he agreed to submit a demo anyway.

Writing "Here We Are" was a tricky process, he explains. A National Day theme song is possibly the most scrutinised piece of work in Singapore; it's something that the people own, or feel they own, collectively.

But it's also something that has to come from the heart of the songwriter, Lim believes.

As he looked around the world at the time — with so much geopolitical instability and polarisation — Lim wrote his demo. It was a gentle, reflective ballad. Here we are, it's tough times, but there is reason for hope.

"I couldn't bring myself to write, like, a super upbeat tune," he tells me. It would have felt disingenuous to himself, to the state of the world at the time.

He didn't really believe it would get picked. But it did, and it's now Lim's biggest musical legacy.

Daydream, delusion

For now, anyway. On Aug. 26, Lim released his newest album, "DAYDREAM". It's his first full-length album since 2018.

The title is deceptively unassuming, simple and lighthearted. But it's a record of Lim's own mistakes, how his own dreams and aspirations led him down a path that almost destroyed him.

"It's like... if you chase a dream too much, you might forget what's actually in front of you, and you might lose what you have as well.

So in a way, this is me kind of waking up. From this dream slash nightmare."

It's also a literal record of his lowest points, put to words and music. One of the songs, "Nobody's Home", was written while he was in the UK, while he was still contending with the end of his relationship.

He remembers how he and a friend were messing around with samples, and then the whole song "just poured out of [him]" in one take.

"After that, I just collapsed on the couch and I cried. I just bawled my eyes out," he recalls.

It's that exact take, that exact recording from that day, that's going on the album.

Little island

Now, Lim's in a much better place than he was three years ago. He is, he quips, "a bit older, a bit of a washed-up unc".

But he's ok with it. In his wide-awake state, he understands how the pursuit of his art almost swallowed him whole.

And he is determined not to let that happen again.

"I've realised that so much of what I was chasing in the metrics of success or happiness, a lot that really doesn't matter anymore... Your work is not who you are," he says.

"[Now] my ideal is just to be able to survive comfortably, doing the things I love, and providing for my loved ones."

Dreams change, goals change, opinions change. Being back in Singapore, this little island with its little stages, might have been a nightmare for the Lim of four years ago.

But he knows better now.

Lim tells me how, at last year's NDP, his niece came to Singapore to watch him perform in the parade. "Actually, can I show you?" he asks.

He scrolls through his phone until he finds the video. It's of a tiny girl sitting in the Padang, cheeks flushed in delight, calling out something indiscernible.

"She's calling, 'Uncle Charles'," he tells me, with the proudest look on his face. It's a different kind of daydream from the London lights, a littler one.

But one that is surely, surely, worth closing your eyes for.