Milliblog Weeklies, Week 166 – Nov.28, 2021

Milliblog Weeklies – India’s only multilingual, weekly new music playlist.
Week 166: On Spotify | On YouTube
11 songs this week. Both Spotify and YouTube playlists have all the songs.

Kheench Te Nach – Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui (Sachin-Jigar) – Hindi/Punjabi: After exhausting the quota of true-blue Punjabi songs, the composing duo finally get down to business and produce a genuinely interesting song for the film. The tune is mighty unusual and the singers—Vishal Dadlani, Shalmali Kholgade and Brijesh Shandilya—sometimes seem to break off whatever the tune is, but all that only adds to the charm!

Shukar Manavaan – Velle (Yug Bhusal) – Hindi: There are a lot of songs in Velle, and the only one that stood out for me is Shukar Manavaan. Composer Yug (he had produced outstanding music in the Marathi film Chitrafit 3.0) doesn’t do anything dramatically new, to be honest, and the melody fits in the current Bollywood scheme adequately. But the short song has an engaging melody that Armaan Malik handles very well.

Voice of Unity – Maanaadu (Yuvan Shankar Raja) – Tamil: Yuvan delivers a frenetically paced song that sears with superb lines by Arivu! Silambarasan’s usually poor singing has been used cleverly by Yuvan (since he himself is a singer on the same lines!) in a tune that doesn’t require staying on the tune as much as delivering the short staccato lines with a punch. Arivu joins too with his part and does a smashingly good job!

Cute Ponnu – Enna Solla Pogirai (Vivek-Mervin) – Tamil: I thought the song was actually a Punjabi song that I stumbled upon on T-series’ YouTube channel 🙂 The hook seemed very Punjabi-style, but Vivek and Mervin add their own stamp and the song has an undeniable charm thanks to Anirudh’s vocals. Also, Arivu’s lyrics upend the usual trait of the Tamil (or Indian?) cinema hero of following ‘cute girls’ and instead simply has him asking the said cute girl to follow him! Seems like a tiny step for the male kind in Tamil cinema in acknowledging that women have agency too 🙂

Magizhini – Govind Vasantha (Tamil/Indipop): What a brilliant song! Even if the song was conjured around the theme (billed as ‘First Tamil LGBTQ Song’), the music stands on its own. Of course, together—the theme, music, and the lyrics by Madhan Karky—the experience is accentuated at a different level. Starting with Keba’s fantastic guitar work and a distinctly Latin-style background, Govind traverses different musical contours and finally lands in two extended outros of almost a minute each—one with vocals and one without, led by Nikhil’s flute—that breaks free from the earlier melody that he so exquisitely created. All through the song, Keerthana Vaidyanathan confidently handles every twist the tune offers her.

Ra Ra Linga – Skylab (Prashanth R Vihari) – Telugu: An actor from Kerala (Nithya Menen) co-produces a Telugu film called Skylab (after the first space station launched by NASA) and the composer ropes in another Tamil composer, Sean Roldan, to sing it! Says a lot about how seamlessly things come together in the Southern film industries! After what I had mentioned about Sean’s vocals last week, with this song, it almost seems like Prashanth R Vihari makes adept use of the same voice to great effect in mining mirth out of it by accepting what it is, instead of making him sing a genuinely melodious tune to evoke a different mood 🙂 The chorus deserves a special mention too – Pavani and Lakshmi Meghana.

Edo Edo – Shyam Singha Roy (Mickey J Meyer) – Telugu: A quintessential Mickey song! That trademark soaring vocals—Chaitra Ambadipudi is fantastic!—and ambient sounds in a perfect mix. Mickey throws in unusual lines like the one in the anupallavi – Ee Chali Chelitho Ila Ee Thondaraloh…! And oddly, despite seeming like an eclectic addition, even the English lyrics fit quite well!

Uyire – Minnal Murali (Shaan Rahman) – Malayalam: Looks like the very-Hindi trend of multiple composers is rapidly catching up with multiple film industries in India. So after Sushin’s first song, here’s Shaan’s second song from the film! This is a rather unusual song for Shaan who doesn’t seem to have done something that sounds more like Pradeep Kumar-style melody! The voices too make it unique – Narayani Gopan and Mithun Jayaraj.

Ilaveyil – Marakkar (Ronnie Raphael) – Malayalam: What starts off almost as a mirror image of Chinna KaNNan Azhaikkiraan, thanks to the Reetigowlai raaga usage, morphs into something more imaginative given the world music influences that Ronnie infuses, most probably owing to the film’s theme bringing in outside-Indian collaborators of Marakkar. It’s so good to hear M.G. Sreekumar in this song, while Shreya Ghoshal is her usual self – exceptional!

Sojugada Soojumallige – Garuda Gamana Vrishabha Vahana (Midhun Mukundan) – Kannada: Midhun picks the popular Janapada Geethe on Lord Shiva and adds a haunting musical layer over it that comes alive with that incredible percussion mix. Chaithra J Achar handles the soaring vocals beautifully and makes her mark on a song that so many others have sung already.

Shuruvaagide – Sakath (Judah Sandhy) – Kannada: Judah has a gorgeous melody here that is confident being slow and very relaxed in the way it flows. He has many words in the lyrics that drawl (including Shuruvaaa-aaaa-gide!) and that becomes the main hook of the song too – not just that word but many such words drawled. Sid Sriram is a great choice for this tune and he really sells the lazy drawl! And Judah keeps the background sounds so minimal that the vocals shine even better!

Via Milliblog! https://milliblog.com
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