So­ca star Iw­er George says he will re­lease a new ver­sion of his song “Hap­py Peo­ple” with­out the na­tion­al an­them at­tached. The new ver­sion of the song should be re­leased on Fri­day.

George said he was first alert­ed to the con­tro­ver­sy when he was first con­tact­ed by the me­dia. He said he was shocked at the thought. 

He said he con­tin­ued mon­i­tor­ing so­cial me­dia about the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the song, and he had even tuned in to the Prime Min­is­ter’s press con­fer­ence on Mon­day, where Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley had re­spond­ed say­ing he was not “jump­ing up and down about the an­them be­ing used.”

George said that pro­pelled him to re­lease a state­ment this af­ter­noon.

He said since the first word of the song is “at­ten­tion” which was de­lib­er­ate­ly put there to sig­nal that peo­ple were ex­pect­ed to stand at at­ten­tion when the an­them is be­ing sung. 

“My use of the na­tion­al an­them was to ex­press pa­tri­o­tism and the song then con­tin­ued with ex­pres­sions of ‘We are hap­py peo­ple,’” and “Based on peo­ple’s per­cep­tion of Iw­er George I could un­der­stand that per­sons may think that when I hit the stage peo­ple will be jump­ing up when the an­them is play­ing.”

He is ask­ing the pub­lic to delete pre­vi­ous ver­sions of the song. He said the song’s aim is to bring Trinidad and To­ba­go back to a place of “proud­ness, re­spect, love and hap­pi­ness” 

“To show that re­gard­less of what is go­ing on in the coun­try to­day, Trin­bag­on­ian peo­ple are hap­py and proud peo­ple and we have to con­tin­ue to show this to the world,” he said. “Let us not for­get to hold the flag with great pride and pa­tri­o­tism and show the world that we are more than just a place of ad­ver­si­ty and let us con­tin­ue to stand as one.”