Milliblog Weeklies – India’s only multilingual, weekly, new music playlist.
Week 299: YouTube | Spotify
Khwaab Dekhoon – Ek Din (Ram Sampath) – Hindi: I guess we are getting to hear the last few songs recorded by Arijit as a playback singer. There’s a Pritam’ish flourish in Ram’s composition, particularly in the mukhda, and Arijit handles it beautifully. Surprisingly, with just the background singing, Tarannum Malik Jain manages to stand out with a distinct voice!
Tu Hi Disda – Bhooth Bangla (Pritam) – Hindi: Pritam. Arijit. Mostly predictable melody but still sounds lovely. Nikhita Gandhi adds to her part really well too.
Minmini Penne – Kaalidas 2 (Sam CS) – Tamil: Sing Chandrababu’s famous ‘Bambara KaNNaaley’ this way: Bambara KaNNaaley. Pause. (Kaadhal) Sangadhi SoNNaaLey. And you get Minmini PeNNe’s opening 🙂 It’s a catchy enough song with a whiff of nostalgia and Kapil Kapilan handles the vocals impressively as usual. Sam does very well with the vocal first interlude, the use of Kazoo, and the well-mounted rhythm.
Indra – Once More (Hesham Abdul Wahab) – Tamil: At this point, Once More feels more like a music album with multiple music videos than a film’s soundtrack considering the first single was released in November 2024! I hear that the film is finally slated for a summer 2026 release. Hesham does perfectly well in the pleasant, likeable melody though Hanan Shah murders Tamil pronouncing all “La” as “la”, as in ‘UraippaaLa’, ‘MuraippaaLa’, ‘NadappaaLa’ with the milder ‘la’ even though before all this he gets ‘KangaLa’ perfectly right. I guess there wasn’t enough diligence to follow through his pronunciation during the recording.
Nenjam, Theera Theera – Leader (Ghibran) – Tamil: While the other songs in the Telugu film ‘Biker’ did not scale up to the superb ‘Pretty Baby’, I’m glad to see Ghibran go back to his inventive streak that was a steady feature in his early days. Nenjam has an unusual melody that breaks every pattern I could think of and goes in really interesting ways in every line! Shweta Mohan is absolutely terrific even though Kapil Kapilan, while doing well, sounds quite different. Theera Theera is a bit conventional in comparison, but goes straight back to Ghibran’s winning streak back in 2013, with stellar soundtracks like Naiyaani and Vatthikuchi. The tune is vibrant, the orchestration intricate and imaginative, and excellent singing by both Chinmayi Sripada and Haricharan.
Perambur Gaana – Anbe Diana (Bharath Sankar) – Tamil: I was considerably less impressed by Bharath’s Maaveeran (liked only Vannarapettayila). But he opens his account in Anbe Diana on a slightly better footing. Bakkiyam Shankar and Pari Elavazhagan’s colloqial lyrics are funny and they land well in Bharath’s thara-local tune. To get Jassie Gift to produce a respectable song is an achievement in itself too, btw.
Rasathi – A R Rahman, ft. Shakthisree Gopalan (Tamil): To me, Thiruda Thiruda is A R Rahman’s greatest album ever/yet. If you wake me up in the night and ask me to name the A R Rahman album that I rate as his No. 1, it would be Thiruda Thiruda. The movie was mostly stupid, but that’s a different issue. Amidst the power-packed music of Thiruda Thiruda is Rasathi, widely believed to be India’s first fully acapella song, with no musical instruments, and relying solely on human voices to create both the rhythm and melody! It was a path-breaking song even back in 1993. Shahul Hameed did a mesmerizing job with the singing in the original. I’m really glad to hear Shakthisree picking this up for a cover version, 33 years later. Her cover stays faithful to the original even as the backing chorus underplays the highs of the original to highlight her vocals more evocatively giving the version a more hymnal quality than the original.
This song is not available on Spotify, strangely!
Chichubuddi – Dacoit (Bheems Ceciroleo) – Telugu: Right now, 3 top Telugu heroes have pan-India movies releasing soon: Ram Charan (Peddi), Nani (The Paradise), and Adivi Sesh (Dacoit). While the former 2 have well-known, pan-Indian’ish composers like Anirudh and A R Rahman, Dacoit has a Telugu-only Bheems Ceciroleo. But I’m glad that he has done an excellent job, going by the 2 songs released. Both the songs have a pan-Indian appeal. While Rubaroo soared on the melody beautifully, Bheems shows admirable restraint in this ‘item’ song where the usual instinct is to load it up with racy rhythms. But in Chichubuddi, Bheems layers the rhythms in a casual, methodic way, and loads it on top of a very tuneful melody. Terrific singing by Jonita and Ram Miryala too.
Guruthunda – Chennai Love Story (Mani Sharma) – Telugu: Before I get the song, what’s with the sudden love for Chennai in Telugu films? First ‘Couple Friendly’ and not ‘Chennai Love Story’! As for the song, it is a relief to hear veteran Mani Sharma in form—that too, in an almost Ilayaraja’ish flourish—after a long time! The pallavi’s melody is straight out of Raja’s repertoire, while the interludes reek of Raja even more. When Haricharan goes, ‘Venakaki choosukunto nee payanamala’, my mind raced back to ‘Kaadhal illa jeevanai naan paarthathillai’ from PaNakkaaran (1990). Shruthika Samudhrala does a terrific job with the charanam.
Njan Alkali – Oru Durooha Saahacharyathil (Dawn Vincent) – Malayalam: With the steadily sedate rhythm, Dawn gets the background brilliantly right. Then it is left to Kapil Kapilan and Neha Nair to handle the captivating tune and they do damn well.
Mellave Mellave – Madhuvidhu (Hesham Abdul Wahab) – Malayalam: A sweet, easily likeable tune with Josy Alappuzha’s sax standing out beautifully. Vineeth Srinivasan’s singing is always an asset.
Rama Rama – Brindhavihari (Hesham Abdul Wahab) – Kannada: Hesham’s Kannada debut… auspiciously so, at that! Very bouncy, almost bhajan-like fervour. Sung well by him too. I’d add this to two other recent, well-composed songs on Lord Rama – Jaat’s ‘Oh Rama’ (Thaman S, Hindi), and Vishwambhara’s ‘Rama Raama’ (MM Keeravani, Telugu).
Amsham – Aksomaniac, ft. M.H.R and Bhumi (Indipop/Malayalam/Tamil): While much of the music video’s Manmadhan and Njan Gandharvan (the 1991 Malayalam movie starring Nitish Bhardwaj and Bhama) origins went above my head, musically, the piece is entrancing! Composed by Aksomaniac (Aron Kollassani Selestin) and M.H.R (Mohammed Hussain Rahman), and sung by both, along with Bhumi (Bhumika Anantharaman), the song evades genre labels and really deserves your patience and attention to understand the flow and melody! But broadly, the construction reminded me of Sai Abhyankkar’s music where a complete song seems like a skilful amalgamation of 2-3 shorter, captivating musical phrases which do not necessarily flow as seamlessly with an interconnection as pallavi, anupallavi and charanam… almost as if the larger aim is to ensure that those smaller segments capture attention for an attention-span starved reels-obsessed audience. I don’t mean this in a negative sense, but simply as an ongoing evolution how music is consumed, depending on the predominant format of the times. So, Aksomaniac’s portion, Bhumi’s part, and M.H.R’s portion only seem loosely connected, but they all sound phenomenally tuneful, nonetheless. Bhumi’s Tamil part was my favorite, with her adapting Aksomaniac’s ‘Manasile’ in Tamil to offer the bridge between the two parts.
Kareyole – Sanjith Hegde (Indipop/Kannada): Another effortless winner by Sanjith, with both singing and more so, composing. From the sedate start to cranking up the rhythm with ‘Gaali Kareyole’, this is a joyfully immersive melody. And scintillating singing by Sanjith who also seems to be having a solid time. I also see that Sunny MR (usually with Pritam’s team, and an accomplished composer himself) is one of the music producers. The quality is evident in the song too.
