I love/hate the current direction of filmi songs.
I love Sunidhi Chauhan. Such a full, throaty voice in a field of high-pitched warblers.
The prevalence of techno oriented numbers makes me think that this is early 80’s Bollywood all over again with a rave edge. Anu Malik and other (now) old-timers are like “oh yeah, I remember how this goes” and it’s all of a sudden it’s Disco Deewani with 130bpm kick drums. As a DJ I appreciate this up-tempo rhythm-accented style but the English lyrics/rapping/fakey Dancehall-stylee have got to go. I so wish there were remixes of the current hits without the cheeseball English sections. Now of course my entire perspective comes from the fact that my Hindi is limited to bits and pieces and I only “hear” melodies and textures and not words in filmi singing. No doubt it might be the corny Hindi verses or choruses that would make a Hindi-speaker cringe and not the English interjections. I can’t stand “Just Chill” but there are a million worse bilingual songs coming out all the time. I appreciate bilingualism as a concept and practice, but Bollywood can’t fake American-style urban cool. It just sounds wack.
IK