The man who can sing 112 national anthems off by heart

A Malaysian man has learnt 112 national anthems by heart, despite only knowing how to speak two languages.

Lawyer Thean See Xien, 31, started learning the songs as a hobby out of boredom in 2002 and has spent the past 15 years building up his knowledge of national anthems, which now covers most of Europe, Asia, and South and North America.

Mr Xien can only speak English and Malay, but has been told he sounds like a native when he sings. He has even learnt South Africa’s national anthem which is sung in five languages.

“I found Danish and Arabic very challenging,” he told the South China Morning Post. “While languages like French, Spanish and German are pretty easy because the pronunciation is much more straightforward.”

Despite knowing more than a hundred anthems, Mr Xien is determined to continue learning  them until he can sing the national song for every country on every continent.

Mr Xien said his encyclopaedic knowledge of national songs has won him friends around the world.

“I studied in the UK and among the other international students it was a great party trick. Even now my social circle tends to show me off, especially if there’s a foreigner in the crowd," he said.

"It’s like ‘oh, he can sing your national anthem’, and then everyone starts calling out country names and it snowballs from there." 

Describing himself as a "shower singer", Mr Xien has had no formal training in singing but has a good ear for pronunciation and music.

His IQ of 176, which classifies him as a “near genius or genius”, may be the reason why he can retain and recall so many anthems with ease.

Mr Xien, who works as an in-house counsel for an oil and gas company in Kuala Lumpur, uses current affairs to guide his selection of which anthem to learn.

“If there’s an event coming up I’ll learn the anthem specifically for that, like when I learned Saudi Arabia’s national anthem for a work event and the Ecuadorean one for a Latin American festival here,” he said.

He explained that national anthems can reveal interesting historical facts - for example, that India's and Bangladesh’s anthems are both written by the poet Tagore.

The only continent Mr Xien does not intend to learn the anthem for is Antarctica, but he quipped: “If penguins taught me a national anthem, I’d do my best to learn it.”