Malaysian Jeff Tan Wins The Star Voice, Says He Was Jobless And "Chilling At Home" When He Saw Ad For Radio DJ Hunt

Talk about serendipity. If not for a simple post shared on Facebook by one of his seniors from school, 29-year-old Jeff Tan may never have taken part in The Star Voice.

In fact, he most likely would be in New Zealand on a working holiday right now, instead of standing here in Singapore’s Capitol Theatre, and getting interviewed by 8days.sg after getting crowned winner of Mediacorp’s radio DJ talent hunt.

Jeff, who is from Zhong Kunhua's team, beat out fellow finalists 27-year-old Joey Tay from Team Pan Jiabiao, and Jensen Wang, 26, from Dennis Chew’s team, to emerge champ.

Even before the finale, Jeff was touted by his peers as the favourite to take home the title. 

When we spoke to fellow contestant, YouTuber Kelly Wong, following her elimination from the show, she immediately picked Jeff as the contestant to win it all.

“My pick has always been the same person, I think it’ll be Jeff. From the very start, even during the auditions, I thought he has what it takes to win,” she said, before joking that Jeff’s “the oldest, so he needs the job”.

As the winner of The Star Voice, Jeff will walk away with a one year contract with Mediacorp, amongst other prizes.

8days.sg caught up with the Malaysian, who worked in Taiwan as an audio-visual journalist for close to 10 years, to find out more about his path to glory.

8DAYS: Congrats on your win! How are you feeling right now?

JEFF TAN: Honestly, I was pretty surprised after knowing the results 'cos I've always felt that this is like a dream. I'm thankful to myself for taking this chance that [eventually] gave me such a big change in life.

Throughout this entire competition, I think the biggest takeaway would be the friendships I've forged with the other contestants. This is a reward that I think is even more important than emerging as the winner.

You came over to Singapore from Taiwan 'cos of this competition. How did you hear about The Star Voice?

When I left my previous job, I was just chilling at home the entire day, not knowing what to do. Then when I was scrolling through Facebook, I saw a senior of mine, who is a DJ, share the advertisement [for the show]. I found it pretty interesting, and since I was jobless at that time, I decided to register for it.

After you were selected to audition for the show, how long did it take for you to move over?

I used two days to pack up everything I had from about 10 years of living in Taiwan, and flew here to Singapore.

So you brought everything to Singapore?

Yeah. I had originally planned to move on to my next destination [after quitting my job in Taiwan], but I just didn't know what my plans were. The original plan was to go to New Zealand for a working holiday. I even got my visa and everything ready. Then I saw this competition.

[I thought that] even if I don't progress to the very end, I can still go for my working holiday [after that]. That was my original plan.

Now that you've won, those plans for a working holiday are no longer happening, we presume?

Yeah, I might just do my 'working holiday' here in Singapore instead. Or rather, a work-and-stay.

Which radio station would like to work for?

Actually, in my heart, I would like to go to YES 933 first, and then transfer over to LOVE 972. But of course, if [Mediacorp] were to ask me to go to a different station, I wouldn't mind either.

After all, this chance [to be a DJ] came to me after three months of hard work.

Why that trajectory?

[I want to go to] YES 933 'cos it's the station that follows the trends closely. In that way, I can train my ability to be up-to-date and more energetic.

The reason I want to go to LOVE 972 is that its listeners are a little older, so I need to be prepared with some skills beforehand. I hope to learn these from 933, before moving on to 972, and it would make it a smoother process.

How about a DJ that you want to work with?

Of course, my mentor Kunhua. After the last few months of training, I feel like he has sacrificed quite a bit, to be very honest.

And I didn't manage to thank him on stage 'cos of the time limit. I hope to be able to work together with him. He's really very creative, and very nice towards us newbies. He's very warm-hearted and not stingy [with his knowledge] at all, so I think I would be able to learn a lot from him.

In your speech, you mentioned that you weren't very confident about your performance, despite receiving a lot praise from others. Do you feel that the win will be a boost of confidence for you?

Actually, no. I don't know why, maybe it's just who I am. I've always been very resistant to whatever people tell me, face-to-face.

Like if someone tells me that I did well, or that I'm creative, or humorous, whenever I'm faced with praise like this, I would always feel a little resistant to it. I don't know why. It's like when you fall down, you would automatically want to get up, right? But for me, I would still doubt myself.

I don't think this is bad either. It has allowed me to constantly strive to be the best that I could be during the competition.

You also received high praise from [guest judge] Mickey Huang during the first segment of the finals. What were your thoughts when you heard what he said?

I felt like I wasn't worth the praise 'cos a lot of the work came from Kunhua too.

For the performance that everyone saw, we actually went through about three to four rounds of back-and-forth changes, before the final product came about. And Kunhua wrote down a lot of things that he thought was not bad, to add on to mine. I really have to thank Kunhua for the script, and as for Mickey's judgement, I'm very thankful for his praise. I really need to learn how to accept praise from others (laughs). Thank you, Mickey.

Do you think that your previous job as an audio-visual reporter helped you in this competition?

I think it helped a lot. I didn't conduct any interviews, but through my job, I saw many journalists interview celebs, and attended press conferences where I would see people like Mickey host.

I also produced many entertainment-related videos, wrote scripts, as well as filmed and edited them. So I think all these on-the-job experiences trained me to be a quick thinker, and helped me with writing scripts.

Catch up on The Star Voice here, or watch the finale below: