Known mostly for his over-the-top Rajnikant extravaganzas, Sivaji and Enthiran, S. Shankar has had a much longer career as director. He’s even strayed away from Tamil and made a Hindi film with Nayak, and he’s made plenty of bizarre Tamil films in the past too. One such is the 2005 film Anniyan, which I have…
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This song from the 1981 film Yaarana has a special memory for me. While the song itself is a great little melody, what first comes to my mind is the way my parents described me singing the words to it when I was a kid, rather than what they actually are. While this doesn’t spoil…
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Jo haal dil ka is a very strange song. It’s strange only in the context in which it is presented. After all, heroines in wet, clingy clothes, mouthing sensual songs near waterfalls and other convenient water features is hardly strange for a Hindi film; It’s par for the course, but this song has no attempt…
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As a singer, KK is one of those hidden gems. Not that he is unknown by any means, but over more than a decade, he’s sung some of the most iconic songs of Hindi cinema, while always remaining a fairly low profile character. His singing has a versatility and a certain heart-wrenching quality that none…
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As much of a startling change to the landscape of Hindi film music as A.R. Rahman was in the mid-1990s, his transition from Tamil films to mainstream Hindi cinema was also a gradual one from the audience’s perspective. He only showed up on the average film-fan’s radar with the release of the Hindi dub of…
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The clichéd ‘running around trees’ Hindi film song was made possible by that other strange practice that’s quite unique to Indian cinema, playback singing. As long as some much more talented singer was sitting in a studio singing their heart out, it allowed the actors to get up to all sorts of antics on screen…
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Hemant Kumar, while never gaining the sort of insane popularity as other playback singers of Hindi cinema during his time, always had a unique presence. On the surface, the slightly quivering quality of his voice set him apart from the rest, but beyond that, he had a honest cadence and a truly emotional delivery that…
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Most songs in any language end up being about love. Perhaps love provides some extra creative impetus for the penning and singing of songs. But if that is true, then the loss of love seems to be all that much more inspiring. Thus we have heartbreak Hindi-film style, circa 1965, in Ajnabi, tum jaane pehchane…
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The girl at the window or the balcony is a classic romantic trope, probably tracing back to ancient theatre, lost in the mists of time. In Hindi cinema, with the majority of the audience living in an increasingly crowded urban environment, that quickly turned into lovers at windows in adjacent houses or apartments, forever separated…
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In 2005, Yahaan arrived and went by without anyone noticing, for the most part. The undervalued Jimmy Shergill might have had something to do with it, or the first outing of an actress no one had heard of, Minissha Lamba, or the ever complicated setting of Kashmir. But in spite of the lukewarm reception, the…
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