Shamitabh Audio Review

Illayaraja is my all-time favourite music director and Dhanush, one of my favourite contemporary heroes! Naturally, Shamitabh, the upcoming Hindi movie, they are working together in, is one of the movies I am eagerly awaiting. Meanwhile, thanks to Facebook, I came to know just today that the audio of Shamitabh was launched almost a week ago! Now, how can I stop myself from not listening to the album?

Grapevine has it that Shamitabh is about young man’s dreams of making it big in filmdom. It is natural that the album opens with the song, “Ishq E Phillum”, rendered well by Suraj Jagan. The lyrics are a clear indicator that the grapevine is indeed right! However, the song is brilliant in only patches! The Illayaraja touch is “visible” only at a few places. Otherwise, the lyrics make the song, describing a young man’s obsession with films, makes it interesting to listen to!

The next song, “Sha Sha Sha Mi Mi Mi”, crooned brilliantly by Caralisa Monteiro, is a chartbuster in the making! You can “see” the Illayaraja touch in this song, though it might slightly remind you of the famous (1980’s) Runa Laila albums!! The violin interludes, especially the second interlude, have the classic Illayaraja stamp on them!! To me, this song is my pick of the album!!

“Pidly Si Baatein”, rendered by Amitabh Bachchan, that follows is another interesting song of the album. A solo violin interlude, lasting 20-odd seconds, makes it worth listening! Only Illayaraja can come up with such brilliant stuff I guess!! And yes, hats off to Amitabh Bachchan for an amazing rendition!!

The next song, “Stereophonic Sannata”, is a remix of Illayaraja’s 1980’s chartbuster, “Aasaiya Kaathule Thoodhu Vittu” (Johnny). Shruti Hassan’s voice spices up this song that has sufficient doses of modern day percussion instruments to keep Gen Y busy on the dance floor!!  

“Thappad”, crooned by Suraj Jagan & Earl D’Souza, again sees an interesting mix of percussion instruments and sounds like a song tailor-made for the dance floor!!

The album signs off with “Lifebuoy”, an interesting song that remixes the original lyrics/tune of the Lifebuoy ad!!

Overall, Illayaraja seems to have attempted to please both his diehard fans as well as Gen Y, for whom a song is something that is meant to dance!! In the process, we only get to hear the classic Illayaraja only in patches!! Thankfully, diehard Illayaraja fans have a huge collection of his songs from the 1970’s to 1990’s to listen any time and this one certainly doesn’t fall into that category!!