It’s been five years since the greatest melodic innovator of Tamil film music passed on. Here are ten songs that showcase his creativity even in his past-his-prime phase.
There’s a point in every composer’s career where the baton is passed on to the next generation. There’s a new king, so to speak. In MS Viswanathan’s case, the dethroning happened in the late 1970s, but he continued to keep making music. Wiki lists 21 films in 1980 — by which time the great composer’s successor was well and truly entrenched. Here are ten of my favourite songs from the “Ilaiyaraaja era”.
Amman alangaram (Oru Varisu Uruvagiradhu, 1982): Signature rhythm work (a drums-tabla combo-percussion), singers (SPB/Vani Jairam) in top form, and melodic phrasings to die for. The three opening lines in the pallavi are flat, each one descending a note from the earlier one, and then, there’s an unexpected climb at “artha jaama naeram”. The second and fourth lines of the charanam-s, too, are breathtaking, with minor notes casually being strewn.
Read the rest of this article here: https://www.filmcompanion.in/features/tamil-features/ms-viswanathan-10-beautiful-songs-from-the-ilaiyaraaja-era-the-1980s-baradwaj-rangan/
Copyright ©2020 Film Companion.
Baradwaj Rangan 
Madan
July 14, 2020
Nice list with a bunch of songs I haven’t heard. Nitham in particular is beautiful (also Kanaa but that one I have heard before). Nice to see MSV allowing himself to be a little influenced by Raja with audible and interesting basslines in a couple of those songs as well. Not that he never used bass before or anything, but on Vekkapadavo or Nedunaal, there is a bit of a walking bassline effect.
You said about ” it’s the last great MSV-SPB collaboration.” – On similar lines, I nominate Iniya Gaanam as the last great IR-SPB collaboration. It’s an interesting contrast too. I felt barring some songs like Enna Satham, IR never made SPB sing as softly as he did on some MSV songs (Vidiya Vidiya is also super soft). IR used him as a kind of Kishore-Rafi hybrid and tapped his versatility and exuberance while MSV often substituted him for songs he might have given to PBS in the past.
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Ravi
July 14, 2020
A nostalgic trip indeed for MSV fans. Looks like you have chosen the less popular songs (kanaa kaanum is an exception). That is why you have probably left out some of the more popular songs from the movies you have covered. For example, Illam sangeetham , raagangal pathinaru, kavithai arangerum neram etc. Also, varumaiyin niram sivappu, gowri manohariyai from mazhalai pattaalam etc.
“Amman alangaaram” reminded me at times of Mutthamizh sandagngal from Maadi veettu ezhai. Enga veettu kannagi also had the more popular “Ithai Thaan”. Similarly Selvame from Amara kaaviyam which had a never-ending pallavi. As a counter to Vekka padavo, I would suggest “Aasai theera pesa vendum” from ratha Paasam. Also, Vasanthatthil oru naal had the somewhat offbeat and rarely heard “pacchai vanna” by SPB and vani Jeyaram.
Some of the other great songs of that era (in my opinion) are:
1 Samudra raajakumari, 2. Maragatha Megham 3. Mazhai kaalamum (savithri), 4. Nee varuvai ena 5. Maan kanda sorgangal 6. Ennenbatho (Lorry driver..) 7. manthira punnagai 8. Unakkenna mele, 9. Azhagiya Thirumuga (brahmacharigal) 10. En Peyare Enakku (oru indiya kanavu which also had a lovely Susheela number -Oda karaiyil oru puliya maram) , 11. Ninnaiye rathi endru 12. Swara raga srutiyodu (antha 7 naatkal)13. Vidiya vidiya and a few more.
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brangan
July 14, 2020
Ravi: Mazhai kaalamum, oh yes, what a magnificent song. That kind of slightly ‘hardcore’ classical song… can anyone recall what the last one was in Tamil cinema?
Not the ‘pleasant’ semi-classical song like ‘Malargal kaetten…” or the lovely ones Vidyasagar made (‘Ding dong kovil mani’…)
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Madan
July 14, 2020
BR: Minsara Kanna from Padayappa and Isaiyil Thodanguthamma from Hey Ram around the same time are the last ones I can recall. There’s also the classical tinged Idhuvarai Naan Oru Pazhai Manithan and Piraye (Pithamagan) but I am not sure I would call them hardcore classical like this MSV song or the ones I mentioned up.
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Ravi
July 14, 2020
BR, MSV had some lovely devotional songs like “Thangam vairam navamanigal” by BMK and Vani Jeyaram and “Amutha Thirumugatthil” from Devi Dharisanam by VJ. Even some of his songs from Mridanga Chakravarthy like “Nada Mayamaana” and Ithu Ketka Thigattadha had verve and melody but i guess such type of songs had gone out of fashion by then.
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Honest Raj
July 14, 2020
Have never heard of any of the songs except “Subbanna Sonnarunna”. My favourites are rather well-known ones:
“Vethalaya Pottendi” (Billa), “Maan Kanda Sorgangal” (47 Naatkal), “Raagangal Pathinaaru (Thillu Mullu), “Malligapoo Vaasathile” (Raanuva Veeran), “Kavithai Arangerum” (Andha Ezhu Naatkal), “Kadavul Padachaan” & “Vidiya Vidiya” (Pokkiri Raja), “Thanjavooru Melam” (Simla Special)
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Honest Raj
July 14, 2020
“Margazhi Thingal”. Also, how about “Kanda Naal Muthalaai” (I know this is a remix but that’s what makes it hardcore. :D)?
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brangan
July 14, 2020
Ravi: Found a copy of ‘Muthamizh sonthangal’ and listening to it after AGES 🙂 What a song, but TMS is struggling with the sangatis. How I wish Yesudas had sung this. (Just two years earlier, in IMAYAM, MSV had used Yesudas for Sivaji in the superhit ‘Gangai Yamunai’)
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Ravi
July 15, 2020
BR, Thanks. TMS was struggling even in “Ammaanai” with a strong nasal tone. Though MSV experimented with both Yesudas and SPB for Shivaji he more often than not fell back on TMS. Speaking of “Imayam” I thought TMS was splendid in “Kannile Kudiyirunthu”. Even later, a 80’s song – Anbenum oliyaga from Chiranjeevi.
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KayKay
July 15, 2020
B, gotta say, really really really DIG IT when you do your music musings!
It always send me on this extended sojourn to YouTube seeking out these underrated or in some case outright obscure numbers.
Forgot how gorgeous Muthamizh Sonthangal is, I actually saw Maadi Veettu Ezhai in the cinemas in Neyveli eons ago!
And yeah..this gem is slightly marred by a pretty past-his-prime TMS. Yesudass would have knocked it out of the park, but such a mismatch for Sivaji. Only late period Malaysia Vasudevan came close to being a suitable replacement.
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KayKay
July 15, 2020
“That kind of slightly ‘hardcore’ classical song… can anyone recall what the last one was in Tamil cinema?”
I feel the hardcore classical songs in the modern era in TFM is a bit of a rarity. Wonder if it’s the audience’s lack of love for these numbers? Sindhu Bhairavi was the last bona fide classical soundtrack which was a hit. Remember an old obscure Tamil film called Koil Pura which had some nice classical numbers including a wonderful Gowla-based Jesudass song called “Vedham Nee Iniya Nadham Nee”. Comparatively, Malayalam and even Telugu songs still utilize a lot of carnatic stylings in their songs even today like this lovely KS Harisankar number in Anugraheethan
And Sid’s hit in Ala Vaikunthapurranamuloo is basically a rock riff on the classic Hindolam Krithi.
Not the biggest fan of Sid’s but am glad he’s allowed to do a fair bit of carnatic stylings in his songs.
As for Tamil, pickings are really slim but the last number I heard with some nice sprinklings of classical flourishes is this nice HJ number from Nanbenda which has some wonderful brighas in the charanam and a nice electronic veena touch, slightly marred by Unnikrishnan’s rendering (would hate to call someone still young past his prime but his voice has lost a lot of the mellowness)
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Madan
July 15, 2020
KayKay: Glamour and star quotient is high in Tamil, just like Bollywood. So neither have had a hardcore classical soundtrack film in a long time. The trend started even earlier in Bolly and from 90s, Tamil became star oriented rather than kadhai oriented.
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vijay
July 15, 2020
Apart from SPB delights, the KJY-VJ duets (and their solos as well) for MSV were always special. Thangathil udaleduthu, thendralil aadum koondhalai, niniaivaale silai, andhamaanai and many more..
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Ravi
July 15, 2020
Vijay: True. One of my favorite MSV-KJY-VJ songs is “Ithu irava pagala” from Neela Malargal with lovely lyrics by Kaviyarasar.
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vijay
July 15, 2020
As far as “handing the baton” is concerned, for the last 10 years the baton has been sitting there gathering dust after Rahman renounced it 🙂
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vijay
July 15, 2020
Another wonderful semi-classical from Vidyasagar in the mid-2000s was “thendral yennum theri” from a Prabhu film.Sung by Madhu Balakrishnan, was in Nasikabhushani I think. This genre, along with the singer’s melody genre has been extinct for a while. Somebody has to do a Jurassic-like revival to get it going again.
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Madan
July 15, 2020
Speaking of mid 2000s and Madhu Balakrishnan, Kanaa Kanden Adi was another sorta classical song.
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Honest Raj
July 15, 2020
@Madan: “Aalanguyil Koovum” – from the same film – is another such number.
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vijay
July 15, 2020
Vidyasagar had a great run in the early 2000s. For his kind of style with emphasis on melody, he decided that maybe MalluFM was a better fit for him. It is TFM’s loss, not his.
The left out song from Anbe Sivam, “Mouname paarvayaai” in Dwijavanthi is a favorite. He is a MSV devotee and you can see certain influences in his tunes
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Madan
July 15, 2020
Yup, that one too.
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sai16vicky
July 15, 2020
Another MSV influence from Vidyasagar — the ever soothing ‘Kaatrin Mozhi’ from ‘Mozhi’ sounds like a close cousin of MSV’s ‘Nila Kaalangalil Odum’ from ‘Ninaithaale Inikkum’. IMO, Vidyasagar is very underrated. I have one (incomplete) writeup about him, which I hope to complete some time ….
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Honest Raj
July 16, 2020
“Oru Kili Aasai” (from Paramasivan) is yet another one from the MB-Vidyasagar combo – although it sounds way too mellow for my taste.
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Honest Raj
July 16, 2020
For his kind of style with emphasis on melody, he decided that maybe MalluFM was a better fit for him. It is TFM’s loss, not his.
As far as Tamil film music is concerned, art has always been the hero (artists are secondary)! Film or non-film music, the Tamil Mann will continue to produce some of the great musicians. 🙂
About the melody part, even outright action films (Dhill, Villain, Dhool, Thirumalai, Sullan) were no exceptions. Those days TFM was like the then Australia cricket team. Apart from the old war horses (Raja, Deva, Rahman), you had Bharadwaj, Mani Sharma, Harris, Yuvan, and of course VS. As you say, it could’ve been a conscious decision on his part, but he did give some memorable soundtracks in the latter half of the decade – Mozhi, Raman Thediya Seethai (it had a couple of great songs), Jayamkondaan, Kanden Kadhalai, etc.
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Aadhy
July 16, 2020
The last ‘hardcore’ classical song in TFM I can think of is Vidyasagar’s Thendral ennum ther eri from Paasakiligal , set in the rare Nasikabushani ragam (AFAIK the only song in this ragam in TFM). It had swaram battles, nadai battles, touch of thillana, and the superb Madhu Balakrishnan to Yesudasify the song.
Vidyasagar had the ability to compose very intricate ragam-based melodies as well as massy hero intro songs and super-fun kuthu numbers (Ghilli, Dhool are favorites). His compostions are very rooted, ‘Indian’ in the sense he didn’t dabble much with Rock, Pop or Hip hop, which is what probably gave his peers like Yuvan and Harris an edge over him in their appeal.
Honest Raj: “Apart from the old war horses (Raja, Deva, Rahman), you had Bharadwaj, Mani Sharma, Harris, Yuvan, and of course VS. ”
Not to mention Joshua Sridhar and Ramesh Vinayagam, who’d appear occasionally, give banger albums and disappear.
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Madan
July 16, 2020
“His compostions are very rooted, ‘Indian’ in the sense he didn’t dabble much with Rock, Pop or Hip hop, which is what probably gave his peers like Yuvan and Harris an edge over him in their appeal. – Related, that Mani Sharma/ Bharadwaj/Vidyasagar sound seemed to go out of style in the mid noughties. Songs like Ovvoro Pookallume would not be hits today. That whole sound, for better or worse, just disappeared.
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Honest Raj
July 16, 2020
@Aadhy: But JS and RV were hardly “regulars”, no? Speaking of which, there was also Dharan (Parijatham, Siddhu +2).
Madan:Related, that Mani Sharma/ Bharadwaj/Vidyasagar sound seemed to go out of style in the mid noughties. Songs like Ovvoro Pookallume would not be hits today.
Same with “Oru Kili Aasai” (it sounded a bit outdated even then) and “Mazhai Nindra” (I absolutely love this one though) from Raman Thediya Seethai.
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brangan
July 16, 2020
I disliked ‘Ovvoru pookalume’ even back then. Such a boring song, with such banal philosophies.
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Madan
July 16, 2020
I don’t like Ovvoru Pookalume. Just that that sort of song was very popular at that time. On similar lines, Oru Mani Adithal. A kind of banal, Raja-lite sound with mediocre production values.
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Aadhy
July 16, 2020
Madan : ” Songs like Ovvoro Pookallume would not be hits today. That whole sound, for better or worse, just disappeared.”
True, probably for better I’d say. Ovvovoru pookalume was too corny/banal a song even for the noughties. Same with “Oru kili aasayil” as Honest Raj said. I would also add “Nyabagam varuthe” to this list, which was a huge hit back then (“Thozha thozha, oru vaartha pesa, ey dushyantha”…etc, can keep adding songs to this list). I’d say Baradwaj was the cornmaster of the noughties, like S.A. Rajkumar in the 90s. Coming to Vidyasagar, I found the whole Mozhi album boring. That sound you referred to, was on its way out slowly by then.
Honest Raj : Oh yeah I forgot Dharan, the guy gave some good albums (had a Yuvan-ish touch). His work was also sparse though, like JS and RV, never rose to prominence.
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Madan
July 16, 2020
Oh yeah, don’t get me started on Nyabagam Varuthe. Yeah, Mozhi is of a piece with those songs. That was the problem with Vidyasagar, at least so far as his Tamil work goes. He would do some wonderful songs like Un Samayal Araiyil and a lot of bland stuff rest of the time. And he had that 90s Raja-lite sound that I mentioned. While Harris also did super-boring songs but with super-duper production and a so-called Western sound that allowed him to stand out.
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rsylviana
July 16, 2020
About ‘Oorellaam Unnai Kandu’ from Nanbenda , I always felt it sounded very similar to ‘En Veetu Thottathil’ from Gentleman. The song does have some good lyrics though.
So good to see that there are indeed people who dislike ‘Ovvoru pookalume’. I flat-out hated the song ever since I heard it first but my family was aghast that I didn’t like such a ‘rejuvenating’ song when in reality the song just had the opposite effect on me. To make matters worse I was dragged to watch the movie in theaters thrice! Bleh…
All this talk about Vidyasagar and no mention of the “Run” album ?! It was all the rage when it came out and those tunes still sound fresh. He was terrific when he composed for action/mass films too and gave some cracker albums like Ghilli , Dhool and Thirumalai.
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rmahalik
July 17, 2020
Not from 80s, but from late 70s, like Andhaman Kadhali, MSV’s Mampoove siru mainave intha rasathi rosakili, is one of my favorite song from that decade. This song was a big hit Ceylon radio. IIRC, it was on top of the chart for a long time in Ceylon Radio. KJ and Susheela sound so good.
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brangan
July 17, 2020
rmahalik: That’s a Chandrabose song, from MACHANA PAATHEENGALA
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Macaulay Perapulla
July 17, 2020
Talking of underrated pieces, I used to love this song from Mani sharma when it was release in 2002. It had an interesting beat, which hooked me.
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Rad Mahalikudi
July 17, 2020
Yes, BR, realized it after posting it. Thanks. Beautiful song.
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sai16vicky
July 17, 2020
@Madan: Oh, I love ‘Oru Mani Adithal’. I agree with your Raja-esque comparison — the prelude with chorus, bassy lead-in to the main melody, interludes harking back to the lead-ins. Plus, Hariharan’s voice and the ever-beautiful Kausalya! I love the poetry ‘thendral pola endrum unnai thediguren’ 🙂 But my favorite song in that album has to be ‘Vennilave Vennilave’.
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sai16vicky
July 17, 2020
Some of Vidyasagar’s rehashes from Malayalam didn’t work that well in Tamil though. The original of ‘Kannal Pesum Penne’ is ‘Walking in the Moonlight’ sung by Hariharan. The latter is gorgeous to say the least. Similarly ‘Malai katru”s parent ‘Oru Raathri Koodi’ is an all-time classic. Finally, even ‘Mynave Mynave”s original ‘Kannadi Koodum’ sounds better.
Has anyone heard ‘Aaro Viral’ from Pranayavarangal? It’s IMO one of Vidyasagar’s songs with the transitioning between Hamsanandam and Brindavana Saaranga. In other words, it is part ‘Isaiyil Thodanguthamma’ and part ‘Maadathile kanni maadathile’ :).
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vijay
July 17, 2020
I would definitely not put Vidyasagar in the same plane as Bharadwaj or Mani Sharma. He has had many memorable contributions to TFM to his credit starting from mid-90s(how many of you have listened to “Poothirukkum vaname” by HH/Uma RAMANAN OR “vaa saki vaa saki”?) and to a certain extent reinvented himself unlike the others. His output was mixed at times, but whose was’nt?
Was Rahman firing on all cylinders in the mid-2000s?
.Even in a bad film like Ilaignan, one of VS’s last full thrust efforts, he had a spectacular score in a couple of songs, thanks in part to London orchestra. Hariharan’s Thozha vaanam dhooram illai from this film is a regular favorite for me, maybe HH’s last memorable song in TFM. He has never sung in such a rousing manner before.
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vijay
July 17, 2020
rsylvania, can you imagine a Vijay album today with songs like “azhagooril poothavaLe” (SPB feasting on the tune) or even Shankar mahadevan’s “neeya pesyiadhu”?
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vijay
July 17, 2020
I would like to see a write-up in this blog on what you think goes through an artist’s mind when they realize they have lost the market/fanbase/hold and keep churning out stuff that neither please their fanbase nor gets them new fans. Think of MSV in early 80s or IR after the mid-90s or the recent Rahman. Are they self-aware? do they have a coterie feeding them ego/lies constantly? do they lose a bit of the sense of their judgement? and/or are they just too stubborn to change anything? A psycho-analysis and different perspectives will be interesting to read (backed up by anecdotes, first hand accounts, interviews etc.). Because this is a phenomenon that has sufficiently repeated itself in TFM(and elsewhere also and even with directors). It would also be interesting to see counterexamples from TFM or the West where artists have pushed themselves constantly and have managed to stay, if not at the top, very near it, even in their twilight years
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vijay
July 17, 2020
Once in a while songs like “ovvoru pookalume” or “rosapoo chinna rosapoo” somehow become ‘hits’, maybe because the movies did well, Lets not pan our Bharadwaj’s and SA Rajkumars for this 🙂 Their rare 15 days of fame
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vijay
July 17, 2020
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sai16vicky
July 17, 2020
@vijay: Poothirukkum Vaname is a fabulous composition in Abheri (another classical touch!). And I would put him far above Mani Sharma and Bharadwaj and in fact very close to Rahman (Vidyasagar is a complete composer in the Raja/Rahman sense). He has some stunning background scores in Malayalam movies.
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Madan
July 17, 2020
” It would also be interesting to see counterexamples from TFM or the West where artists have pushed themselves constantly and have managed to stay, if not at the top, very near it, even in their twilight years” – That depends what you define as ‘top’. The more popular you are, the harder it is to change because the stakes are much higher. In the West, the absolute top pop artists usually don’t have a shelf life beyond 10 years or so. Exceptions have been singer-artists like Mariah Carey whose brand is defined mostly by her singing and much less by her songwriting. People will cite Bob Dylan as a counter example but he hasn’t set the charts on fire for a long, long time. You can have some sort of relevance if you land a blurb on some magazine and that is easier to achieve in the West where you can maintain a critical mass of fans enough to sustain your career without dominating the market.
Interestingly, this was possible in Hindi film music, probably still is to some extent. Amit Trivedi is still a sought after composer even though I don’t remember any point at all when he was the absolute talk of town. You are sort of seeing something similar develop in the case of Santosh Narayanan though he has a lower profile than Trivedi who has contributed songs to relatively bigger films like Wake Up Sid (Ik Tara).
“when they realize they have lost the market/fanbase/hold and keep churning out stuff that neither please their fanbase nor gets them new fans. Think of MSV in early 80s or IR after the mid-90s or the recent Rahman” – I don’t think they think/thought in those terms because that’s not what made them successful. The ones who slavishly followed the market like Deva or SAR had a much shorter shelf life and far fewer of their songs are remembered today. I think all three composed from their heart and found themselves at odds with the zeitgeist at a certain point. But they were already engrossed in their internal journey and didn’t want to be disturbed.
You also have to make films that would coax out the side of Raja or Rahman that their fans long to hear. Stylish romances were still being made in the 90s. The tone became lighter in the 90s which suited Rahman more so than Raja (for whom the Mike Mohan kerchief-fests were perfect material). But that kind of stylish romantic film became rarer and rarer in Tamil cinema from the mid noughties which coincides with his ‘decline’. Notice how he came back in vogue during VTV; whether you like that soundtrack or not (and I didn’t), you cannot deny Hosanna was a super-duper hit. Now, you’ve had Unna Nenachen from Psycho running up yuge number of hits on YT and then again with the Dil Bechara OST for Rahman. They can write songs that capture the audience’s imagination when the films have room for such songs.
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Aadhy
July 17, 2020
Definitely Vidyasagar is leagues ahead of Baradwaj and Mani Sharma. But I somehow feel (similar to what Madan pointed out) most of his music has always been in the soft melodic zone and might have missed out on an X factor, in terms of fusing Indian melodies with western arrangements. This might be the reason for his music to not reach Raja/Rahman level of greatness, who held mastery in fusion music.
I was thinking of an example, take Sudum Nilavu by Vidyasagar and Theenda Theenda by Yuvan. Both set in ragam Reethigowla and have Unnikrishnan as another common factor (apart from their steamy videos). I like both songs but if asked to pick one, I would pick Theenda Theenda because this kind of ‘fusion’ sounded much fresher in 2002 than Sudum Nilavu in 2006. Now Vidyasagar is definitely a better ‘classical’ composer, but his arrangements in these semi-classical songs are a bit too plain for me. Konja neram Konja neram is another example of a good song, but it’s not as madly exciting as something like a Theekuruvil from Kangalal Kaidhu sei . I’m nitpicking here but just wondering why Vidyasagar despite being a master of melody that he is, didn’t reach the mad levels of fandom that a Raja or Rahman, or even a Yuvan has. His most popular albums in Tamil, as well as my favorites, are still his mass outings with Vijay, Vikram, Run etc.
P.S. I haven’t followed VIdyasagar’s Malayam body of work, so I’m restricting my observations to TFM.
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brangan
July 17, 2020
Aadhy: Konja neram Konja neram is another example of a good song, but it’s not as madly exciting as something like a Theekuruvil from Kangalal Kaidhu sei .
I completely agree with you that Theekuruvi is a fabulously innovative song, and nothing that Vidyasagar did ever came even close to this level of “invention”. But where I’d disagree is that this “invention (or “innovation”) is what causes (in your words) mad levels of fandom.
Among people who are music-o-philes, certainly yes. But I get the feeling that for most of the average/lay listeners, it’s still the basic hummability factor that causes them to like a music director.
I have no proof of this, but I would bet that the average/lay listener did/does not give a shit about MSV’s madly inventive four-line pallavi-s, Raja’s madly inventive bass lines, Rahman’s madly inventive sonic structures.
I would say that a “pleasant and nothing more” album like CHINNA THAMBI will find infinitely more takers than something madly inventive like TIK TIK TIK.
A “En veetu thottathil” or “Pudhu vellai mazhai” will find infinitely more takers than something madly inventive like “Theekuruvi” or “Dil gira dafatan”.
A “Vaan nila nila alla” or “Rajavin paarvai raniyin pakkam” will find infinitely more takers than something madly inventive like “Ninaithathai nadathiye…” or “Pattathu rani”.
So the REAL question for me is this:
Why does a Vidyasagar fall by the wayside when a Rahman doesn’t?
Or put differently, what makes a Rahman still a “saleable commodity” despite his recently iffy hit ratio?
Why are we — i.e. not just music-o-philes, but audio companies, directors, the whole ecosystem — more forgiving of Rahman’s “lesser” soundtracks than we are with a Vidyasagar?
Why does the music ecosystem confer “mad fandom” status on Rahman vis-avis a Vidyasagar?
(One answer I have come up with is the cult of personality. Perhaps?)
A slightly different question:
In the MSV, Raja, early Rahman eras, the “success” of a composer was very evident — it was a “measurable’ quantity. Sales of LPs/cassettes, the number of times a song would be requested on “Neyar Viruppam”, or even the number of songs that would far outlive the film…
But today, how do we know that “Unnai nenachu” from PSYCHO is a “hit” song? I love the song. I think it’s a terrific song. But did it capture the “masses” the way the Anirudh songs do these days?
How does one find this out? Are these measurable anymore?
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Rahini David
July 17, 2020
BR: Don’t YouTube views and likes make it easier to understand what is a hit and what is not?
Or do I not understand what you are asking?
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brangan
July 17, 2020
Rahini David: Sure, there are things like YouTube views, ring tone sales, etc. But a lot of these are also “bought’, just like you can “buy” trailer views, etc. So I’m not sure anymore.
What are your options when buying YouTube views?
https://marketinghy.com/buying-youtube-views-much-cost/
The Flourishing Business of Fake YouTube Views
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Aadhy
July 17, 2020
BR : “But I get the feeling that for most of the average/lay listeners, it’s still the basic hummability factor that causes them to like a music director.”
I’m not sure about the demarcation. The average listener may not be able to point out the intricacies in an inventive composition, but he/she will appreciate that the song has something new, something inexplicably addictive that pulls them (slow poison and all), something different that has not been heard a thousand times before. Sure, En veetu thottathil will have infinitely more takers than Theekuruvil , but the quality that Rahman can do both En veetu thottathil AND Theekuruvil is what contributed to his ‘cult of personality’ I think. Ilayaraja could do a Kuyila pudichi AND a Raja Rani Jackey . Plus, there is a huge subset of songs, albums rather, from these composers that are liked equally by both music-o-philes AND the average listener (like a Moondram Pirai or Dil se), a very rare quality. That’s probably the X-factor, that their music would touch the soul of the average listener AND have layers for the music-o-philes to dig into.
“Why does a Vidyasagar fall by the wayside when a Rahman doesn’t? Or put differently, what makes a Rahman still a “saleable commodity” despite his recently iffy hit ratio?”
Well, I personally found all of Rahman’s recent works stale. He’s still sought after by directors probably for the brand value, market etc.
But how does one know if the average listener is still forgiving of Rahman? How do we know if a song is a hit? Very difficult to say. Majority of audience that consumes new music on a daily basis are mostly the music-o-philes and the youth. Probably the internet virality, airplay on radios, public performances and tiktok trends (until it was banned) are the new measurables.
But one thing I’m happy about is that the music of a movie is still not driven by audio companies but by the listener (atleast in the south). ‘Music albums’ still an integral part of our movies, and there is no 5 different composers/DJs rehashing the shit out of classics, shoving in some EDM loops to garner youtube hits. To a large extent, the average listener here still identifies music composers, associates and follows their work.
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Madan
July 17, 2020
BR: I will both add to and disagree with your argument. I also agree that it has sod all to do with innovation. A lot of innovative music has never been commercially successful because they are the equivalent of the futuristic concept products of the tech world that aren’t ready for mass consumption. They’re too far ahead of your time. It’s definitely not the innovation that made MSV, IR and ARR so popular because the audience doesn’t contextualise and argue out the innovation. They just know they like what they’re hearing.
So what do the above three have that Vidyasagar doesn’t? Longevity. Not longevity in terms of their own careers (which they do have) but in terms of how long after release their songs, at least the most popular ones, were remembered. This is where Vidyasagar suffers. Less of his work got canonised than theirs. This could partly be attributable to his music but partly also to other factors that may have had nothing to do with his musical talent and just circumstance. The films he worked on and the music they required, how it was received at the time of release and so on. And the fact that his work has so far not had a re-appraisal. Some of Raja’s 90s work (post Rahman) has had that but not Vidyasagar. This is where his sound being dated hurts him. MSV, IR and ARR each had the opportunity to define the sound of the period they dominated. OK ARR didn’t dominate in number of films but there was undeniable anticipation around his relatively few soundtracks and they went straight to the top again and again in the 90s. Vidyasagar was just not THAT talented to create a sound that would be different from Rahman’s and still get liked as much.
He was like the band Camel. Sandwiched between the Genesis/Yes/ELP era and the arrival of Rush with a new sound altogether, they were a pretty successful also ran of progressive rock back in the day and little more. It was not on account of a lack of competence, they just didn’t have something that the audience deemed fresh or interesting. Camel scored a lucky break decades on when the talisman of Opeth Mikael Akerfeldt fanboyed about them. If similarly, the next hot composer after Anirudh cites Vidyasagar as a major musical muse, people will be scurrying to check out ‘this guy’. That does not look likely to happen though, the way TFM was organised up to mid noughties. People will keep going straight for the composer who defined that era of music and not the others.
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rsylviana
July 18, 2020
rsylvania, can you imagine a Vijay album today with songs like “azhagooril poothavaLe” (SPB feasting on the tune) or even Shankar mahadevan’s “neeya pesyiadhu”?
@Vijay – Ha 🙂 But I do like “Unakaaga” from Bigil even though the song’s video is ,true to Atlee’s style, nothing special and just wannabe. But its not just the melodies that Vidyasagar was good at , even his massy numbers in the commercial films were superb. The “Soora Thenga” song from Ghilli has to be the best intro song for Vijay right from his casual looks, dance, the music and even the lyrics that was just right for the song and his character in the film . It had none of what Atlee seems to insist on all his films which is “I’m gonna bring in the entire population of Gujarat for just one song,dress them up in Ranveer Singh hand-me-downs and make Vijay mouth some of the corniest bits of advice these suckers ever had to sit through”.
Lets not pan our Bharadwaj’s and SA Rajkumars for this 🙂 Their rare 15 days of fame
@Vijay – Hehe 😀 I do like “Nadhiye Adi Nile Nadhiye” from Vaanathaipola more so because of(again) the video.I imagine Vikraman’s one-liner to SAR for the song should have been “Its a Prabhudeva song! So just go bonkers!”. As for Kausalya, I don’t remember much about her except that I always felt that she and Shilpa Shetty were few of the actresses who could hold their own when dancing opposite Prabhudeva.
@BR – Related to what many have stated , one reason due to which I think why Vidyasagar didn’t make it to the league of Raja & ARR is maybe because his songs didn’t have the coolth quotient even when they were released ?! I’m not sure about Raja’s career trajectory but when ARR burst into the scene and gave some fun and peppy numbers like Chikkubukku Rayile , Muqqabla, PettaiRap,Ooh la a la,Strawberry Penne,Mustafa in quick succession which were not just instant earworms but also had the “hip” quotient, then you had a composer whom the youth promptly crowned as their “Composer of the Generation”. Which reminds me of Vidyasagar’s “Appadipodu” number that was hugely popular all over India but still didn’t do much for him compared to what “Kolaveri Di” seems to be doing for Anirudh. Tangentially, all this talk about Vidyasagar’s proficiency for mass films got me thinking “Who is the composer in present-day TFM who is giving out competent albums for mass films”? I can think of only Anirudh since ARR seems to be a very bad fit for the Vijay-Atlee films and GV Prakash gives some good tracks here and there but otherwise only Anirudh seems to be capable of churning out groovy numbers that work well within the film and with the particular star’s persona.
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Honest Raj
July 18, 2020
The Hindi version of “Malligapoo Vaasathile” is available on YT. SPB sings with a nasal tone for Thengai Srinivasan’s portions (which were sung by MSV in Tamil). 😀
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Honest Raj
July 18, 2020
I was merely stating that there were other ‘saleable’ composers during that time. Bharadwaj (Saran-Ajith films) and Mani Sharma (he was Vijay’s “aasthana” composer then) were more popular than Vidyasagar back then (Snehithiye/Dhill marked his second innings in Tamil). Around the mid-2000s, when he was about to consolidate his place in the industry Harris and Yuvan were already the leading composers. I’m not sure his exit was any loss to TFM because his stardom was already on the wane (for reasons apart from the ones stated above). That said, I feel it may be the case with IR and TFM of the late 90s – especially, whenever I listen to the background scores of Kaalapani and Guru.
About Bharadwaj, I wouldn’t put him in the same ‘class’ as S. A. Rajkumar, who was more like the composer-equivalent of Vikraman/K. S. Ravikumar.
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brangan
July 18, 2020
Madan: It was not on account of a lack of competence, they just didn’t have something that the audience deemed fresh or interesting.
I think this may be partly it.
I guess the audience acknowledges the fact that Vidyasagar made good-to-great songs. (I mean, ‘Koduvaa meesai’ can be still be used for a ‘mass’ movie.)
But the flip side is that he still comes under the “Raja umbrella”, which Rahman was the first to break away from.
Perhaps the people who define the syntax of music are the ones that the audience “remember”. And maybe that’s when the “institutionalisation” happens.
Now, I’m wondering if it’s going to be possible to break away from the “Rahman umbrella” at all. Because whether you like his songs or not, he keeps up with what his (younger) peers are doing in terms of sound, the latest beats, trends etc.
But that said, I love Santhosh Narayanan’s work. For me, he is the first post-Rahman-era composer whose work is instantly identifiable as HIS.
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Madan
July 18, 2020
“Which reminds me of Vidyasagar’s “Appadipodu” number that was hugely popular all over India but still didn’t do much for him compared to what “Kolaveri Di” seems to be doing for Anirudh. ” – Because Appidi Podu was just regional language commercial music while Kolaveri jumped the shark somewhat like Gangnam Style. It had a funny video and Tanglish lyrics that people could relate to up North. But Appidi Podu is also like roadside paani puri. People may think of it as just a quickie item and deride the hygiene of the stalls occasionally but nobody stops eating it for those reasons. Just the same way, Appidi Podu has never gone out of DJ playlists for parties, especially up North where other kuthu songs like Manmadha Raasa or Kokku Meena Theenuma never made a dent. Kolaveri OTOH, like Gangnam, is completely forgotten now. It’s like the whole mass mania around that song never happened.
That’s the ephemeral nature of pop success and the reason why a song being a hit today does not determine a composer’s future success or legacy as much as we may believe. There is still a filtering going on between hits and ‘classics’. It’s just that we don’t know which ones will be the latter at that time and it’s almost like those of us who lived through that time have no say in it and it is future generations who curate the classics from a bygone era. If you had told me in 1995 that Paatu Padavaa songs, especially Nil Nil Nil or Iniya Gaanam, would one day be less popular than Thendral Vandhu Thoongum Bodhu, I wouldn’t have believed you. And another song from the same period that you simply couldn’t escape from on TV was Otha Ruba Tharen and hardly anybody even remembers it now (relative to how much Thendral Vandhu is talked about), let alone remember that it was a Raja song. Who remembers Karuppa Thaan Ennaku Pidichi Coloru now? 😀
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KayKay
July 18, 2020
I agree that Vidyasagar is the Great Tragic Unrealized Potential in TFM, simply because he was up against some pretty heavy hitters like Raja still going strong, Rahman at the top and an unusually prolific and fertile period for Deva who was just knocking it outta the park with some terrific soundtracks and next to Rahman, gave Hariharan and Unnikrishnan some substantial hits as well. And then the emergence of HJ and Yuvan as the next “hot stuff” made it even more difficult.
The rest I’d seat at the kiddie table.
Baradwaj gave his best tunes for Saran films.
SA Rajkumar, to me always suffered from the Nadeem-Shravan syndrome of “Great Tune but Bland Orchestration”. I do really like “Rosapoo” and “Edho oru Paattu” or “Nee Varuvai enna” as melodies but the musical arrangements…meh. There’s a nice Hari number “Iruvadhu Kodi Nilavugal” that would have been elevated several notches had it had some great arrangements around it.
If the conversation is purely around why VS couldn’t get a stronger foothold in TFM, I wouldn’t even bring Joshua Sridhar or Mani Sharma into the conversation, as they primarily composed in Telugu and dipped the infrequent toe in TFM.
And Ramesh Vinayagam???? Does his filmography even stretch to double digits?
“Vidyasagar is a complete composer in the Raja/Rahman sense)”
ABSOLUTELY AGREE!
“rsylvania, can you imagine a Vijay album today with songs like “azhagooril poothavaLe” (SPB feasting on the tune) or even Shankar mahadevan’s “neeya pesyiadhu”?”
To be fair Bigil did have the lovely (and undeserving) “unakaga vala ninaikiren ”
But yes…Azhagooril Poothavale is simply gorgeous!
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rsylviana
July 18, 2020
I love Santhosh Narayanan’s work. For me, he is the first post-Rahman-era composer whose work is instantly identifiable as HIS
Oh absolutely no arguments there AT ALL ! SN’s work is not just unique to him as a composer but also to the films and situations he composes them for. You can rarely interchange them between different movies.I love his Kodi album barring one or two songs , don’t know why I missed him in my earlier comment though.
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Honest Raj
July 18, 2020
“Paaruruvaaya” from Thaarai Thappattai was missed out.
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vijay
July 19, 2020
Just to clarify, I was NOT making a case for why VS isn’t celebrated as much as IR or ARR when he should have been. Obviously he doesn’t quite belong in that league either for various reasons. But it was painful to see Hair-is-Jayaraj, copycat Deva, i-cant-sing-to-save-my-life Yuvan making it better than him in the 2000s and a couple of them surviving still.. Agreed VS is a generation ahead of these guys and may be considered old-fashioned but somehow Mallu film industry managed to fit him better.
It is laughable that a tune like “ninaithu ninaithu paarthen” from 7G Rainbow colony was considered a “great melody” by Yuvan’s fans once upon a time. The bloke, by his own admission, doesn’t know much. He liberally gets “inspired” by his father’s hits. (I guess “royalty” doesn’t matter here for the dad) And as far as his singing is concerned, if BJP summons him to release an album of sufi numbers it can instantly trigger a mass ghar wapsi movement
As for Hair-is-Jayaraj if natabhairavi did not exist he would’nt have survived beyond 3 soundtracks. I am glad that Alex is ripping HJ a new one in his stand-up acts. I have heard amateur composers and even my friends consistently coming up with better musical ideas than HJ. He could have been their sound engineer.
In this industry it is all about whom you know, not about how much you know…
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vijay
July 19, 2020
And as for the discussion on why the big three in TFM are remembered more it is quite simple. They brought something fresh to the table and they also worked with the best directors/stars of their era. That always helps with the recall value.
VS, for all his talent/knowledge, didn’t really bring a fresh approach to the song-making. He might have been kicking himself in the mid-90s for he and ARR were sort of like classmates in piano classes and stated of their journey around the same time as apprentices. That is what sets Rahman apart. When ARR was working with SAR(yes, you read that right) in the late 80s, in a conversation he is known to have casually mentioned that to unseat IR you cannot do the same things he does and expect to get better results. You needed to bring a whole new game to the court. He must have been just in his twenties when he said that but already displayed a much sharper musical IQ than the other wannabes
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vijay
July 19, 2020
” That depends what you define as ‘top’”
Madan, I meant top of their game, not necessarily commercial popularity. In the late 90s, IR didn’t do justice to his own style of composing. He lost a lot of his fans during this phase. One koduma soundtrack after another..
I lived through that phase, in the nascent years of internet forums and there was often a sinking feeling when a new soundtrack came out and you heard the first couple of songs and went aarggh!! The best I could come up with to explain this is that he wasn’t inspired enough for whatever reason. And/or didn’t give a damn. Occasionally he would surprise in Mallu, like Guru being his swansong soundtrack(at least for me) kind of like how ninaithaale iniukkum was for MSV and Delhi 6 (so far) for Rahman.
Same is happening with Rahman for past few years. Labored tunes, nothing exciting arrangements-wise. Most of MSV’s arrangements in the 80s, with out-of-place disco sounds and jarring percussion would have embarrassed a lot of his fans.
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vijay
July 19, 2020
Somehow in the west I see directors and to a certain extent, MDs don’t fall off a cliff with age. They keep reinventing themselves, or at least keep doing what made them great in the first place. Just take Clint Eastwood’s career. If I were to describe it in an analogous desi manner, he started off as Jaishankar, made it to Rajni-status for a while, then got into Vishal Bhardwaj mode(even got nominated for music scoring for that Charlie Parker film he directed) and in his seventies/eighties he became Mani Rathnam. I can’t find a single equivalent to that here. Even Morricone was at the top of his game till the end.
On the contrary take Bharathiraja. His films like kangalaal kaidhu sei, captain magal etc were laughably bad. Same with KB and paarthaale paravasam. To a certain extent Mani has avoided this cliff-drop and I respect him for that. In Bollywood, you could take Ramgopal Varma as a similar case. He set the bar lower with every film in the 2000s.
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brangan
July 19, 2020
vijay: Most of MSV’s arrangements in the 80s, with out-of-place disco sounds and jarring percussion would have embarrassed a lot of his fans.
Oh yeah. That’s there even in some of the songs mentioned above. I love that he still had his “tunesmanship” but lord, the synth sounds…. 😦
That happened with Raja, too. Like you say, I’d be awaiting all the new soundtracks, and then you’d hear something like “Siruvani aathu thanni” and throw up your hands.
I think this may be due to a sense of “keeping up”. They think the world is moving on, and they get into a zone that neither pleases their older fans nor the new ones.
If this has not happened with Rahman, I think it’s because he is the first music director in Tamil cinema who is always ahead of the curve. In the sense that even if you don’t like the songs, they will sound contemporary and “with it”. You may or may not like the DIL BECHARA title track, but it sounds so… “today”. The beats, the arrangements, everything sounds like a much younger musician has done it, and not someone who has been in this field for over 25 years.
That’s really amazing.
I didn’t know about the SAR anecdote. Thanks. I always take such news with a pinch of salt, but I can believe he said (or at least thought) something along these lines 🙂
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Madan
July 19, 2020
“Madan, I meant top of their game, not necessarily commercial popularity.” – Sure, but what I am saying is the pressures are different depending on what game you choose to play. When you are in a left field and yet visible zone, you have more freedom with your choices because your fanbase will also be more tolerant of experiments. But in the pop game, your shelf life is always more limited.
Take two examples. Stevie Wonder’s run in the 1970s from Music of My Mind to Songs In The Key of Life is considered one of the best streaks in R&B, by far. Then the 80s happened and the more he tried to adjust his palate from the 80s, the more forgettable his work became. Remember, Hotter Than July and In Square Circle were both commercial successes but TODAY they are not considered part of his essential output.
Likewise with Michael Jackson. Dangerous was equally as successful as Bad and Hisstory sold and sold as well. Even the last album Invincible did far better than other releases in the market then (though in comparison to previous Jackson efforts, it was considered a ‘flop’). But today, his essential work stops with Bad and a little bad of Dangerous (Black or White).
In both the above cases, what we see is the success of In Square Circle/Dangerous nevertheless marked the beginning of a steady decline in commercial potential as well. And that is how the pop game deserts one master as another gets hold of the zeitgeist.
But once you move to a somewhat lower tier (what used to be the 1x/2x platinum territory), your options open up…in the West, that is. I remember hearing Radiohead’s Burn The Witch blaring loudly out of a car in the parking lot of a posh office block in Mumbai’s Lower Parel and smiling. Nearly thirty years after the debut, Radiohead could still attain critical mass within the group of rock music lovers (which is itself a substantial market) and without trying to make the same album over and over to please fans in the way that AC DC or Iron Maiden have. But that market does not include middle aged suburban moms and dads (especially POC) working in white collar jobs that pay well or in academia nor are school kids going to listen. There MAY be some of them too but Radiohead’s fanbase consists of people who already knew about them from OK Computer/Kid A and college students/young adults who still find Radiohead challenging and interesting in the mass of cookie cutter music.
In Indian film music (well, at least Hindi and Tamil) you never had an option to play that Radiohead kind of game before some point in the last 10 years (which is the point where we have seen Amit Trivedi and Santosh Narayanan succeed). Actually Raja was smart to adjust his game in the noughties as he saw the emergence of new, uncompromising filmmakers like Bala. That took the pressure off him to deliver hits in the conventional, sugar pop vein and he could take on films and subject matters that were novel and therefore interesting to him. The Guru-Hey Ram-Lajja progression is also part of a similar adjustment which really began with Siraichalai. So if his late 90s Tamil work was disappointing, it was because films like Guru weren’t yet being made in Tamil. You can’t make a featherlight, total fluff Vijay-Shalini starrer and expect Raja to somehow deliver a Mouna Ragam. That just doesn’t happen. The song situations themselves don’t allow it and I suspect he was heavily delegating to KR during this period. People will say he did it for Ramaraja films but those films still had the ‘heavy’ situations that created space for both intense pathos and intense romance.
I think Rahman started to do something similar in the mid noughties. And because his fanbase is rather forgiving like Sachin Tendulkar’s, he used that leeway to push his material to a somewhat less accessible space knowing he could always cite the “it will grow on you rule”. But this reset expectations from him…that the Kadhalan kind of soundtrack was never going to happen again (albeit he did kinda deliver it with Endhiran) and you would have to get used to dense ARR. He ceded the earworm space to Anirudh and, yes, Harris, who is like the ultimate survivor. I am trying to think of a Western parallel but can’t. Maybe Kenny G. Adhe ota saxophone in album after album of boring elevator music but it sells.
But you mentioned Hollywood composers and there I would point out that they don’t have any obligation to deliver hits because they only write the background score. And there is nothing to suggest that Raja ability to write BGMs is fatally impaired. ARR is outsourcing it these days to Qutub-E-Kripa with very middling results but it can also be argued reasonably that he was never as strong at BGM as IR so he is simply maximising where his time is spent.
It is another matter that I don’t particularly like some of IR’s new BGMs but that’s just my preference. The fans don’t seem to be complaining about it nor the directors so he would appear to have fulfilled his obligations on both counts there.
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Madan
July 19, 2020
BR: The fact that the post Rahman epoch involves Rahman returning every now and then to deliver a very today song as you said also mirrors the stagnation in Western music from where we continue to take our cues. And maybe we should change that too and start really looking East, idk. But here’s the thing…Rahman was already doing hip hop back in ’93 when he arrived. He was already a master of the synth and computers. He was already doing kinda mock-rock like Kannum Kannum Kollaiyadithal. What CAN Anirudh do anyway that Rahman cannot? Nothing. If say he goes in a heavy classical direction, people will say, oh he is getting influenced by Raja. When Rahman arrived on the scene, Raja’s half hearted attempts at rap songs simply couldn’t compete with Pettai Rap. But there’s nowhere for Anirudh to get to to do rap more convincingly than Rahman. Because there’s no there there. I mean, you could emulate the new directions in hip hop since the 90s but Indian audience will not be able to contextualise it as something radically different from Rahman. For them, there is no difference between NWA and Tyler (or CCR and GNR).
So, because the West has stopped coming up with whole new BASKETS of genres, Rahman having been right at the cusp of that change can easily outdo new composers. This doesn’t mean it’s easy to, by any means, but there simply isn’t a massive blue ocean out there for new guys to exploit. You can have a similar discussion too about why Big Three dominate tennis so much when Sampras stepped aside in his early 30s. There is nothing new for racquet companies to invent now except comfort factors (like the new Wilson Clash range). In terms of what a racquet and strings can do for your game, we have maxed out, so there is no cutting edge equipment advantage for youngsters to exploit.
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Aadhy
July 21, 2020
rsylviana: +1 on Soora thenga being the best ever intro song for Vijay. None of what the Rahman-Atlee combo or what Rahman ever produced can match up to the energy levels of Soora thenga or Machan peru or Aadunga da enna suthi. Also, those were the times when Vijay’s conflicts would be personal. He’d bash up a 100 goons and then dance incredibly to peppy songs and then bashup a 100 goons again, in between some romance and sentiment in this cycle. Simple and fun, not the overblown nonsense that Atlee and Murugadoss dole out today. +1 also on Anirudh turning out to be that ‘mass’ composer of today. He’s even made ‘walking’ star Ajith dance in Aaluma doluma, a rare feat. Him and SaNa have become the ‘when’s their next album out?” kind of musical superstars today, the former occupying the chartbusters space and the latter creating his own unique, experimental and interesting space.
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KayKay
July 22, 2020
Madan, great points as always. I’m merely commenting on this one statement:
“You can’t make a featherlight, total fluff Vijay-Shalini starrer and expect Raja to somehow deliver a Mouna Ragam”
Can it not be argued, however, that at his creative peak (before I get the Raja fans all hot under the collar, to clarify, meaning the ability to effortlessly deliver catchy, ear-worm hit numbers. Am sure the man’s still creative, albeit not in the chart-busting sense) the fluffiness or inconsequential nature of the movie would have mattered not a bit? You could have scribbled the script on toilet paper, wrapped it in cow dung and flung it at Raja and he’d toss back a garland of beautiful melodies back at you.
Lest it need reminding, at the height of his fame the man gave not 1, not 2 but THREE standard-defining super hits for a forgettable Bharathiraaja movie whose sole claim to fame is that it gave “Nizhalgal” Ravi his moniker.
And the man gave a sizzling hit-laden soundtrack for a now-forgotten flick starring a pre-Mouna Ragam fame Karthik and a Gemini Kanesen daughter who debuted and exited the cine field with this one movie.
But when that phase was waning, it took something more substantial than big stars and banners to rouse Raja to deliver the goods he was capable of.
I take the 3 instances when Kamal and Rajini released films simultaneously and had Raja scoring for both. Nallavanukku Nallavan & Enakkul Oruvan (mid 80s) were both great albums. Ditto for Thalapathy and Guna.(late 80s)
But by the time you got to Thevar Magan and Pandian (early 90s) , it was clear listening to both where Raja’s interests lay. It suddenly mattered that Pandian was a pretty god-awful movie. But there was a time when a God-Awful Rajini movie like Thanga Magan, Adutha Vaarisu or Garjanai still rewarded you with a mellifluous Raja album. Sure the man could still deliver a lovely soundtrack for a piece of cinematic dreck like Semparuthi, but instances were getting few and far between by the time the ’90s rolled around.
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Thupparivaalan
July 22, 2020
rsylviana and Aadhy: +1 to the Ghilli Album. It came at a time when I was young and at an impressionable age and I was totally hooked by both the movie and the album. Out CD player had to be replaced because I had practically destroyed it by replaying the film. Good times,
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Madan
July 22, 2020
“But by the time you got to Thevar Magan and Pandian (early 90s) , it was clear listening to both where Raja’s interests lay. It suddenly mattered that Pandian was a pretty god-awful movie. But there was a time when a God-Awful Rajini movie like Thanga Magan, Adutha Vaarisu or Garjanai still rewarded you with a mellifluous Raja album. Sure the man could still deliver a lovely soundtrack for a piece of cinematic dreck like Semparuthi, but instances were getting few and far between by the time the ’90s rolled around.” – No disagreement at all on this because my first readers write on was on this topic which for whatever reason became controversial (read: IR fanatics chose to focus only on albums like Semparuthi, ignoring the drop clearly visible in a Pandian or Uzhaipaali).
I think my point in the above post was more like, sure, IR CAN deliver a great soundtrack even for a mediocre film but that cannot be a baseline expectation for him. Write a good script with song situations that allow for intense and not just chocolate-candy music and if he still doesn’t deliver, blame it on him. But I don’t remember that happening in a long, long time. I don’t remember coming away with the feeling that the situations were there and somehow Raja didn’t rise up to it. Even Friends had Poongatre. Azhagi had a really good soundtrack. And whatever people may want to say in hindsight about Virumaandi soundtrack, it was well received at the time.
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corkscrew2brainbottle
July 22, 2020
A part of the cult of ARR has got to do with how most of the songs were brought on screen, at least in the initial phase of his career, which gave the listeners a high baseline of expectation that sustains till today.
Purely going by the Youtube views, songs are consumed more in the video format than as audio. However, the common usage of them in the films today seems to be one where the songs are chunked and the best bits are used like a soundscape to onscreen proceedings. There are video songs which get uploaded long after the movie releases with random montage taken from the movie. These videos exist despite the presence of a video song and the jukebox/audio version of the song. I think this points to the idea that there is still a demand to ‘watch’ songs rather than just listen to it.
However, in the 90s, songs were shot in entirety and the medium of consumption of the video songs were through TV and CDs (in the noughties). There was a genuine curiosity with how the video song would look like after listening to them in cassettes and audio CDs. A sleuth of beautifully shot video songs in Roja, Kaadhalan, Mr.Romeo, India, Bombay, Minsara Kanavu etc. came about in the nineties. An extremely creative Prabhu Deva choreographed every possible beat in ARR songs, and the songs became favorites owing to its dual popularity (catchy song and cool dance moves). This popularity somehow paid dividends to ARRs popularity eventually.
The other benefit of this practice in the 90s/00s was that some complex songs got mainstream easily. A ‘Kandukondein Kandukondein’ or ‘Kannodu Kaanbadhellam Thalaiva’ had a well shot music video which was spoiler-free. In addition to a hummable melody and layers that would excite the music-phile, the fortune of a good music video catapulted ARR owing to some great collaborations.
For most part of the career, this luck eluded a talented Vidyasagar where a musically rich song of his didn’t have a good music video.
IMHO the only other star that can be expected to do justice to ARRs songs through dance today is Vijay. I have a feeling, ARR is aware of that too!
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Honest Raj
July 24, 2020
You can’t make a featherlight, total fluff Vijay-Shalini starrer and expect Raja to somehow deliver a Mouna Ragam”.
@Madan: That’s a valid point!
@KayKay: Those films were made by directors who were recurring collaborators with IR. In the 90s, a few became irrelevant while the rest went on to work with Deva/ARR. Around this time, the only major filmmaker who continued to work with IR was Balu Mahendra. However, BM himself was a spent-force by then (in terms of storytelling and craft, his later day films were reminiscent of his earlier works). Songs such as “En Veettu Jannal” and “Muththamizhe Muththamizhe” (despite both of them being very IR-ish than BM-ish) don’t belong in that era. That IR was able to come up with great soundtracks later (Heyram, Virumaandi and Bala’s films) tells that Tamil cinema of the mid-to-late 90s wasn’t kind to him.
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Honest Raj
July 24, 2020
I Love India is another underrated IR album from the 90s.
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ThouShaltNot
July 26, 2020
Here are some more worthy songs of MSV (IMO) from the Raja era that might not have found mention here yet. Also, if i’m not mistaken, the two collaborated for Vishwa Thulasi (Kannammaa kanavillayaa is a fantastic SPB number !)
Chandira pirai paarthaen thOzhi sandhippu nigazhndhadhadi (Kizhakkum Merkkum Sandhikkindrana / Jaishankar & Simple Kapadia / VJ)
Engae unnai kandaal kooda nenjil kondaattam (Siththira Sevvaanam / Srikanth & Srividhya/ SPB & SJ)
AdhO vaaraandi vaaraandi villaendhi oruthan en meedhu aeidhaanamma (Polladhavan / Rajini & Sripriya / SPB & VJ)
Then ilangai mangai ven nilavin thangai (Mohana Punnagai / Sivaji & Geetha Kumarasinghe / SJ)
Thalaivi thalaivi ennai seeraattum aanandha thalaivi (Mohana Punnagai / Sivaji & Geetha Kumarasinghe / SPB & VJ)
Poo manakkum poonguzhali poojai devathaiyO (Raththa Paasam / Sivaji & Sripriya / SPB & VJ)
Oraayiram thiruvaasagam unnOdu naan paesuvaen (Thiruppangal /Jaiganesh (?) & Sumithra (?) / SPB & VJ)
Paavai nee malligai paal nilaa punnagai (Dheiveega Raagangal / Srikanth & Roja Ramani / PJ & VJ)
Nadai alangaaram naatiyam appaa idai alangaaram poongodi appaaa (Sujatha / Raveendar & Saritha / SPB)
Mandhira punnagai minnidum menagai sandhana poonkodiyO (Manal Kayiru / S.V. Sekhar & Shanti Krishna / SPB)
Raasaathi rOsaapoove vekkam vekkam aenO innum (Sirai / Pandian & Ilavarasi / KJY & VJ)
Naan paadi kondae iruppaen (Sirai / Rajesh & Lakshmi / VJ)
Oththayilae nee irukka oththuzhaikka naan irukka oththigaiya paathukkalaamaa vaamaa (Silambu / Murali & Rohini / SPB & Chitra)
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rsylviana
July 31, 2020
@corkscrew2brainbottle – You raise a really good point. It is completely possible that the vibrant picturisation of so many of his songs vastly helped the cult of ARR. I recently saw the Mustafa song in youtube and realised that the song still looks so fun even after all these years.Apart from the tomato mashing sequence(which I disliked even before) and the last bit of “Moozhgaatha ship-eh friendship thaan” where they show a shot of Vineeth and Abaaz in front of an actual ship (#Facepalm) , the song has aged really well. Also about Prabhudeva , he is such a sprakling presence on screen and the energy his dance moves exude is so very infectious. No other actor could have made justice to ARR’s peppy hits like Muqqabla, Chikku bukku rayile, Romeo Aataam pottaal, Strawberry Penne,No problem,Urvasi Urvasi and of course Pettarap like Prabhudeva did. Oh just watching him living it up with Vadivelu in Pettarap is sure to lift your spirits higher. Wish that man choreographed more.
IMHO the only other star that can be expected to do justice to ARRs songs through dance today is Vijay. I have a feeling, ARR is aware of that too!
Again, completely possible!
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Madan
August 1, 2020
The picturisation did add a lot to some of those hit songs. That is, I would have liked songs like Anjali Anjali Pushpanjali, Thodha Thodha Malarnthathenna or Snegidhane for their sheer quality or Humma Humma, Urvasi, even Pettai Rap for their innovation regardless of how they were picturised. But songs like Romeo or Mustafa were lifted by the picturisation. Lifted is also an unkind cut, I would say the director and Rahman worked closely in these films. From what I have read, Rahman would deliver a rough cut of the song to help the director shoot the picturisation. And he would look at the picturisation and THEN go back and redo the song. And after these changes, if the director felt it necessary he would reshoot portions of the song sequence as well. It was like making music videos. More so than even Mani, Shankar really grasped the potential of marketing movies through ‘music videos’ and Kathir/Rajiv Menon followed suit.
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