This is the only song I will be reviewing from the movie Luck by Chance. Because I believe this is the only song of the movie that stands musically above the rest, and will be around for much longer after the movie is gone.
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Check the song out.
This one truly brings Shankar, the powerhouse of vocals. In many of the past compositions of SEL (Shankar, Ehsaan & Loy) trio, I always thought Shankar Mahadevan was way underutilized. Either they are churning out too many pop songs (more of Loy’s influence) or they are doing Rock (more of Ehsaan’s influence), and leave little space for Shankar’s classical background. I am glad they exercised those muscles in this song.
Its essentially a vocals solo. If you listen to the background, it remains awefully constant throughout the song. But its hardly felt, because Shankar in the driver seat, takes the song through so many variations, you just don’t notice the 4minutes of monotonus background. Great opening bass notes though. And soon, the loop based background track takes over. The entire song has hardly any organic part, except the vocals. Many of Rahman’s songs fall into the similar category too (for example, listen to Bombay “Tu hi re”, its the vocals that gives awesome variation to a rather monotonous background).
“Tu hi re” from Bombay
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or even “Dil se” title track, sung by Rahman himself (the ENTIRE song is in a single chord ‘E’)
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Way back, before Shankar Mahadevan assumed ‘Breathless’ middlename, he produced a fusion album with Hariprasad Chaurasia, Karl Peters, Sivamani. He did some scat style classical singing. I haven’t heard that style of hindustani classical rendering till date. I surely have the CD somewhere, I will try to include a clip here in future. Few vocal improvisations in this song reminds me of that album. Thumri style singing as per him in the video below. The portions where the drums fade and only bass grooving and then drums kick in, adds to the impact of the song.
Shekhar, the voice behind
None of the other songs from the movie are worth reviewing in my opinion. They will fade over time. “Baware” has good energy, and even more enrgized by Hrithik Roshan’s presence in the song. “Yeh Zindagi Bhi” is sung by Shekhar of Vishal Shekhar fame. It almost feels like Shankar did “Desi Girl” from movie Dostana (music director: Vishal Shekhar), and so Shekhar had to return the favor. the track is liked by many, but passable. Shekhar should stick to music direction only, and give chance to real vocalists, whose bread and butter is to do playback singing!
Here’s Shekhar’s “Yeh Zindagi Bhi”:
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And here’s an excellent cover done by a friend George Kuruvilla over the backing track arranged by JaySwami.
Yeh Zindagi Bhi (With Jayswami) | Music Codes
Here’s the making of the song.
While I am on the topic, a little opinion about the movie. An excellent debut effort by Zoya Akhtar from the creative powerhouse lastname, that rules the Bollywood right now, ‘Akhtar’! Its a movie about making movies. The good, bad and ugly side of it, and realism at its best. Beyond the gloss & glitter of Bollywod, what lies beneath, the underbelly. Beautifully written and acted by the new-age method actor Farhan Akhtar, and directed by Zoya Akhtar. Box office hit, it may not be. Did I like it? 100% Yes. Are everyone going to like it? Mostly No. And it depends on how much apetite one has for watching realism. Most Bollywood movies are of Escapism category. Okay - I am here to talk about music and not the movie, sorry, I got little carried away!
