Readers Write In #783: When the Supreme Hero grooved to the King’s tunes

By Aman Basha

A small peek into the best of Telugu film songs heard in the 20th century

If I were to associate a composer with the often chartbusting music of Megastar Chiranjeevi’s movies, the first name that comes to my noughties bred mind is actually Mani Sharma, the man behind the phenomenal albums of Tagore, Indra and other Chiru blockbusters, not to mention the great communist anthem that is the title track of Stalin. Before Mani Sharma, there were other composers who formed a hit combination with the Boss: Chakravarthy, a personal favorite Raj Koti (ably assisted by Rahman), Bappi Lahiri and of course, Ilaiyaraaja. 

While I was aware Bappi Lahiri worked in Telugu for only a brief spell, scoring only five Chiranjeevi films , I was surprised to note Raaja composed music for only 12 Chiranjeevi starrers. In fact, Raaja’s work in Telugu was not commensurate in quantity for the reputation he held.

This can be attributed to first, the popularity of the songs in some of the Telugu dubs of Tamil films that made Mani Ratnam a star director despite making one Telugu film, but it has more to do with Raaja being the pick of prestige filmmakers like Vamsy and occasionally Viswanath, whose films brought the best from the great composer. Even commercial filmmakers like Raghavendra Rao and Kodandarami Reddy took their more ambitious films to Raaja’s ambit, giving the man more of a Challenge than your usual potboilers.

The sparseness of the Raaja scored Chiru movies has considerably eased my work of choosing favorites. Given their last film came out all the way back in 1992, these songs and albums come from a time when Chiranjeevi was not known so much as the Megastar but as the Supreme Hero and Raaja, well, netru illai, naalai illai.

Abhilasha

The first of the Ilaiyaraaja albums for Chiranjeevi was for a courtroom thriller by A Kodandarami Reddy, whose biggest thrills really come up in the songs where the audience are constantly in attention for how the wonderfully orchestrated songs would progress and how Chiranjeevi would perform to them. These songs, beyond being showcases for the wonderful chemistry Chiranjeevi and Radhika shared, also exemplify what made Chiranjeevi so special when it came to song acting. 

Dancers in a song move in reaction to the music, while Chiranjeevi makes it seem like the music is emanating out of his body through his movement. Take the sudden chest thump accompanying the drum burst in “Eureka” where Chiranjeevi paints 80s Vizag red with his lovestruck frenzy or “Banti Chamanti” where the languid movements carry the erotic charge from the drums.

Challenge & Chiru-Shant

Kodandarami Reddy made 25 films as director with Chiranjeevi with a nearly 80% success rate. It was Reddy’s films like Khaidi, Pasivadi Pranam and Rakshasudu that made Chiranjeevi the Megastar he is today. My favorite, and what I also think balanced the star and actor best in Chiranjeevi’s filmography, is the 1984 release Challenge, one of the best rags-to-riches tales made in the mainstream format. Beyond its writing, rather classy shot taking and a wonderful Raaja score, Challenge was the first of many films starring Chiranjeevi and Vijaya Shanti. 

Shanti never played meek or matched Chriu’s freak like Radha did, but she presented a strong will that worked wonderfully with Chiranjeevi’s wiles and her physical talents made her complement Chiranjeevi’s dancing and fighting perfectly. 

The best of the Chiru-Shanti songs came in Challenge, the wonderful interludes of Induvadana which has a great closeup of Chiranjeevi singing as he holds Shanti close to him or Om Shanti where the performers and makers hit the charanams out of the park despite an underwhelming hook. Even Sayakalam is no slouch.

The Chiranjeevi-Suhasini melodies

Kodandarami Reddy more than made up for the sacrilege of not giving Chiranjeevi andSuhasini a worthwhile song in Challenge by staging one of the most beloved melodies, Malli Malli, in Telugu film music between the pairing in Rakshasudu. Soft melodies were natural accompaniment to the Chiranjeevi-Suhasini, as Suhasini would play the more demure and traditional woman against a flashier alternative in these films. 

There’s also the lovely Karigi Poyanu from Marana Mrudangam, similar to Malli Malli but with smoother choreography.

A rather underrated song featuring Chiranjeevi and Suhasini is in the film Kirathakudu, a really interesting and ambitious reworking of Escape From New York that is a precursor for Animal. The song itself, Nee Mooga Veenai, seems to foreshadow the leads’ future collaboration in Aaradhana.

1990-A Tale of Two Films

Chiranjeevi saw an upsurge of popularity and success starting from the year 1990 to 93 that has not been surpassed by any other Telugu film star to this day. Two of the films released in 90 featured Ilaiyaraaja’s most successful albums for Chiranjeevi, and the very next year would see the last time Ilaiyaraaja scored for Chiranjeevi, a flop that is at best a footnote. These two albums were a peak and a finale for the Raaja-Chiru combo, songs in both albums were all chartbusters.

The first was Kondaveeti Donga, whose song “Chamak Cham” was the first instance of Chiranjeevi, under Prabhu Deva, bringing in some languidness to his dancing even in beat numbers. For Radha, who really matched Chiranjeevi’s freak so well that even the sexism in their romances went haywire, Raaja hadn’t really worked a chartbuster till Shubhalekha that became this pair’s most loved song.

Vijayashanti got herself a plum threesome with Chamak Cham, Kolo Kolamma and Sri Anjaneyam in the same film, but my favorite song from Kondaveeti Donga is the song that plays as Chiranjeevi becomes the Telugu Zorro, Jeevithame Oka Aata, that has SPB carry the adrenaline throughout as the lyrics namedrop the bourgeois. Oh, those were the days.

After Kondaveeti Donga, Kodandarami Reddy directed Chiranjeevi only once again. The dissolution of this partnership was attributed to Chiranjeevi noticing cracks in Reddy’s song making. These cracks become obvious to the layman with the song staging in Chiranjeevi’s next release in 1990, Jagadeka Veerudu Athiloka Sundari.

While the pairing of Sridevi and Chiranjeevi had enough star wattage to blind out the sun on screen by themselves, K Raghavendra Rao pairs them with the most popular Telugu album Ilaiyaraaja ever composed, studded with earworms like Andalalo, Yamaho, Mana Bharatamlo, Dhinakku Tha and even a song as devoted to Lord Hanuman as to star Chiranjeevi. 

My two favorites are really the public favorites, the lovely melodies Priyathama and Abbani Teeyani, both fabulously composed, staged and enacted. I’d tip over to Abbani Teeyani if only for the sheer synchronization between Chiru and Sridevi in pulling off their steps, stars in the true sense of the term.

Rudraveena

In 1988, Chiranjeevi, having just been crowned the Megastar, sought to establish his thespian credentials and further his range by acting and producing Rudraveena, a social drama about a classical musician scored by Ilaiyaraaja.

The Rudraveena album by Ilaiyaraaja was antithetical to any other album he had composed for a Chiranjeevi film and won Raaja his third National Award. The album is studded with many gems from Manava Seva to Lalitha Kala to Nammaku Nammaku and others but few songs have affected as much looping as Taralirada had and how can I not mention Cheppalani Vundi, the synthesis of Sri Sri and Raaja.

Five years after Rudraveena, Ilaiyaraaja too sought to burnish his credentials and satisfy his artistic hunger by embarking on a symphony. Like Chiranjeevi, whose Rudraveena flopped despite acclaim and national awards, Raaja’s ambitions were met with disappointment. While Raaja and Chiranjeevi carried on in their work after 1993, they were never the same even without not working with each other again.

Now in 2025, as Raaja debuts another symphony of his at the ripe age of 81, one hopes that the Megastar, who, if not dance to the King’s tunes, march as the composer did in being “valiant” and push the artist in him to his creative limits. Perhaps he will, mostly to the score of Anirudh in the Nani produced, Srikanth Odela film. No matter whose score, in a Chiru fanboy film, a Raaja reference is to be expected.