Readers Write In #736: When laziness can cost you art

By Madhumithaa S

I’ve been robbed…of art! And it’s criminal.

I recently listened to a cover version of a Tamil song, and wondered why I never listened to the original. And then, I knew.

There are some Tamil songs (and songs in other languages too) that go by this description – the tune is magically melodious, the lyrics are beyond beautiful, and the singer’s voice is absolutely mesmerizing, and yet, you just can’t listen to it. Why?

Where you should be hearing Tamil, you hear some gibberish remains of the language.

Before you proceed to read more, try listening to the song “oru devadhai paarkum neram idu” from the movie Vaamanan – the root cause of my bleeding heart!

While I’m a huge fan of Roopkumar Rathod, I cannot possibly let him get away with singing 

“உனது அழுகை காண தானே கண்கள் வாழுதே”

instead of

“உனது அழகை காண தானே கண்கள் வாழுதே.”

Don’t even get me started on Shreya Ghoshal’s version of Ninaithu Ninaithu parthen from 7G Rainbow Colony. How can something sound so unbelievably sweet, and at the same time, pierce your ears and heart?

Na. Muthukumar is probably turning in his grave whenever these songs are played.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for language not being a barrier to music. Anybody should be able to sing a Tamil song, any Tamil singer should have the opportunity to expand their horizons beyond Tamil. But what I can’t tolerate is the lack of effort!

It’s just one angle of the problem where we, as an audience, lose out on a song. What about the lyricists who pour their heart and soul into writing a song only to get thrown out of the window by a singer who doesn’t take the effort to learn the words? Especially with the kind of resources we have access to, it’s just a matter of taking a few extra minutes to learn the pronunciation.

What have we learnt from endlessly debating about the superiority of tune –vis-à-vis- the lyrics of a song? That no one answer can be right. Songs that have become immortal in the past have had the best of both. 

The songs I’m writing about now are the ones that had the promise of becoming legendary! They had the best of everything, and yet ended up being mediocre and below average only because of a simple lack of effort. Only if the music director, the singer, and the lyricist had taken those few extra minutes to ensure the correct pronunciation, we need not have lost these songs to laziness.  

It’s robbing the world of art. And that’s criminal.