Milliblog Weeklies – India’s only multilingual, weekly new music playlist.
Week 229: YouTube | Spotify
Pukaroon Hari Om – The Great Indian Family (Pritam) – Hindi: While I’m usually a fan of Pritam’s music, this film’s soundtrack (with only 4 songs) didn’t work adequately for me. The one song that stood out is this bhajan sung monumentally well by Sonu Nigam. The piety in the melody is at once enjoyable and calming.
Jaane Jaan – Jaane Jaan (Laxmikant – Pyarelal, Sachin-Jigar) – Hindi: Yes, the new version, sung by Neha Kakkar amps up every nuance that made the original an absolute classic, and yet, this interpretation does have a certain charm. It’s probably because the original’s melody is so tantalizingly beautiful that I give this version a pass too, I don’t know. Neha’s singing adds some extra oomph (stylized vocal fraying) in the antara and that accentuates the appeal.
Railin Oligal – Blue Star (Govind Vasantha) – Tamil: Govind blends the train sound into his song so very imaginatively! The musical hook is straight out of Thaikkudam Bridge’s body of work. Phenomenal singing by Pradeep Kumar and Shakthisree Gopalan, with the busy’ness of the music making it sound even better!
Lingi Lingi Lingidi – Kotabommali P.S (Midhun Mukundan) – Telugu: It’s quite a surprise that the Kannada composer Midhun Mukundan debuts in Telugu with the recreated version of a famous folk song from Uttarandhra (Srikakulam) instead of something of his own body of work in Kannada! While the original folk song itself is an ebullient affair, what Midhun adds is a pulsating zing that only good sound recording could add.
Yema Andham – Spark (Hesham Abdul Wahab) – Telugu: With the Veena notes starting the song, it sounds a bit like Geetha Govindam’s chartbuster, Inkem Inkem, which was sung by Sid Sriram too, incidentally! The tempo of this song is different, though I suspect there’s some raaga-based similarity given that the tune itself is modeled along a faux-classical style. I believe Inkem was Aanandha Bhairavi raaga, though Madhyamavati comes to my mind with this song.
Samayama – Hi Nanna (Hesham Abdul Wahab) – Telugu: There’s a lot of Darshana (Hridhayam) in this song, but Hesham adds enough to it to let it stand out on its own. I was a bit flustered with the fact that Anurag Kulkarni sings the song across all 4 languages that the movie is being released in (Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, and Hindi), Sithara Krishnakumar sings along in Telugu and Kannada, while Chinmayi sings in Tamil and Hindi! They both sing brilliantly, considering how proficient they are, but having the same set of singers across languages could have helped in assessing the melody between the languages.
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Alaye – Kasargold (Vishnu Vijay) – Malayalam: Benny Dayal’s relatively soft start paves the way for an incredibly catchy segment that instantly brings Goa to your mind 🙂 The song’s tempo and rhythm make it a fantastic listen!
Saagarada Aache, Kaala Kaayiso Kade – Sapta Sagaradaache Ello (Charan Raj) – Kannada: Charan layers an unusually busy musical backdrop for what is otherwise a deeply pensive melody. Arun Kamath’s lead vocals (the other singer being Karthik Chennoji Rao) keep the melodic high intact all through but Charan’s music does incredibly interesting things before the anupallavi lands! Charan’s other song, one that he sings himself, Kaala Kaayiso Kade, is not very different – the music is almost distractingly beautiful even with the already lush melody! There’s so much to unpeel and enjoy in these compositions!
Rooh Jaga Doon – Arijit Singh (Hindi/Indipop): Very, very Coldplay’ish, but with a gorgeous Indian twist with that Tabla layer. The musical progression is especially Coldplay-style and when the ‘Ghabraaon na’ line lands, the music takes on a spell-binding turn even as Arijit’s lower pitch, which opened the song, turns into anthemic proportions! Fantastic song, and yet another proof—among so many—that Arijit the composer is as good as, if not better, than Arijit the singer, and has a lot more to offer to the world!