Tag: pop culture
-
Hindi Film Songs Based On Lyrical Theme
We added a new Tag Search feature on MySwar a few weeks ago. We have now introduced a new search attribute in it. You can now look for songs based on their lyrical theme. MySwar currently classifies each song under one of the following themes: Baby Shower, Birthday, Brother-Sister, Brothers, Celebration, Character, Children, Christmas, Dance,…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
“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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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.…
-
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…
-
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…