Tag: pop culture
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Relatives Collaborating In Hindi Film Songs
This blog post started as a Twitter thread. The idea was to create a list of Hindi film music artists who are related in real life and share credits in a song. There were many artists who were related but didn’t share credits in any Hindi film song. These artists were not included in the…
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2016 Bollywood Music Review and Top 20 Songs
As in the past, critics were not happy with the state of Hindi film music in 2016. The charge – yet again – was that it Hindi films were using an “assembly line” approach to create songs using multiple composers and re-packaging hit songs from the past. One thing is certain – music is no…
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2014 Bollywood Music Review
2014 was not a great year for Hindi film music. The Indian Express carried a bleak piece discussing the death of Hindi film music in 2014. We have observed the rise of multi-composer albums and albums riding on one or two item songs for a few years now. This trend continued in 2014. The other…
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“Song Templates” And Innovation In Hindi Film Music
This post is prompted by a conversation I had yesterday on Twitter regarding a lovely new song that had just come out – the Amit Trivedi composed, K. Mohan sung Kinare (Queen, 2014). @kaurvaki No man. Same singer, same composer, similar mood, similar genres but very different songs. — Param Arunachalam (@taparam) January 29, 2014…
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2013 Bollywood Music Review
Another eventful year had come to an end and it’s time to take stock of year that was for Hindi film music. We did a similar review last year, if you’re interested. 2013 saw the release of 154 films with 999 songs between them. We lost a number of artists in 2013. Some were young…
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Why Lootera Is A Better Music Album Than Raanjhanaa
Before I delve into the post, let me state two things: I’d rather not make comparisons but I saw the albums being compared on social media and was disappointed at how dismissive some people were about Lootera – as if it did not even deserve to be compared with Raanjhanaa! I thought it was important…
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Why People Don’t Talk About Pirate Consumers
I engaged in a long debate on Twitter yesterday with popular blogger, Karthik Srinivasan (entire conversation at the end of his post). To boil things down, I was asking why illegal downloaders don’t get called out for doing the wrong thing and his point was that it was not really going to make a difference.…
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Piracy Is Mainstream
I’ve been an anti-piracy advocate in my friend circle for many years now. Over time though, I realized that people like me were rare and specially in India, we became outcasts. Friends and relatives look at me like I am nuts when I refuse to lend them my iPod so they can copy songs from…
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India Losing Music Genres Due To Bollywood?
The title of this post is a direct quote from an interview with Shubha Mudgal. Many months ago, I made a similar observation is a post titled Is Bollywood Overdose Killing India Music?. There is no denying the fact that Bollywood music’s overwhelming popularity suppresses non-film music. But isn’t Bollywood itself a melting pot of…
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Nostalgic 90’s with Kumar Sanu
Writing about the Hindi film music of 90’s is like writing about one single man and that’s Kumar Sanu. If I say that the man ruled the Hindi cinema in that decade, it wont be wrong. What he gave to the listeners in 90’s with some brilliant music by the duo Nadeem-Shravan was magical. You…