Karyn & Sheng Li - Groovin' With The Star @ The Star Vista - 28 Mar 2025

Get ready for Groovin' With The Star, a series of monthly performances happening every last week of the month at The Star Vista - and I should say that this gig is right near my workplace and home, so you can expect frequent posts on this series of performances.

Some of you might be familiar with The Star Vista, a mall strategically located near the Buona Vista MRT station that also houses a large performing arts centre with a theatre spanning nine levels (!) and can accommodate 5,000 concert-goers. You might have caught a concert there at one time or another, across different genres (among the entertainers who held concerts there are David Foster, Mariah Carey, BTS, Yiruma and Yisa Yu). It is also a church service venue for the New Creation Church, so church-goers may already be familiar with this location. It is also used as the Grand Finals for the first season of the reality competition The Final 1 (2013), where Taufik Batisah, Kit Chan and Ken Lim were the judges.

As for the mall itself, it offers plenty of dining and retail options. You have a number of fast-food (KFC, Subway, Guzman y Gomez) and restaurants (Eighteen Chefs, Dan's Steaks, Watami) for your lunch/dinner fix. As for retail options, there is CS Fresh, Miniso, Shine Korea, to name a few; the music store Swee Lee and baking needs store RedMan by Phoon Huat have outlets here as well, serving the needs of residents, students and working population nearby.

Groovin' With The Star kicks off with Karyn & Sheng Li, in their first regular tenure there (to be fair, this isn't the first time they or the Music Heart Band have performed in The Star Vista, which occasional performances last year), and it starts off smoothly with some song requests, but by the second set, the kids are taking them all the way to the end of the performance, which means - no problem with that - they will be performing and taking care of the kiddos at the same time, and boy, were they SUPER ENERGETIC! Okay, I wasn't an energetic person when I was a kid. It's more of like, "Childcare at the Star"? But is goes to show how this dynamic duo are popular with all ages, including the kids, so to sum it off, it's a rather memorable first impression. 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦👍

The two songs I've picked from this gig performance are:

• 有点甜 [originally performed by Silence Wang (汪苏泷) and BY2]
  • This song is the insert song for the Taiwanese drama Borrow Ur Love (借用一下你的爱) (2013) and the Mainland Chinese drama Love O2O (微微一笑很倾城) (2016).
• 小强之歌 (their original)
  • The song you've been waiting for the longest time, with one of the longest known publicity period - you have heard it almost every time during their Music in the City tenure, and it's finally released this February. While it may be a song about cockroaches (feels weird, but anyway), it is actually an empowering song to assure someone who hasn't found a place where he belongs yet that they aren't no good, and that they'll be treated like a treasure when they have finally found one. This is usually the last song during the MITC days, but I refuse to include it late in the gig chase so I'm picking this ASAP.

有点甜 [originally performed by Silence Wang (汪苏泷) and BY2]

小强之歌 (their original)

BONUS: GWTS Compilation (This is kinda hard to ignore, and I forgot to take photos during the period, so here's a compilation:)

Groovin' With The Star

Every last Friday and Saturday of the month, 7.00p.m. - 8.45p.m. (two sets at 7.00p.m. & 8.00p.m.) @ The Star Vista

Karyn & Sheng Li perform on Fridays, with Music Heart Band performing on Saturdays.

Nearest MRT: Buona Vista (EW21/CC22) (take Exits A / C)