For someone who has grown up listening to Hindi songs in Bollywood movies, the music industry feels alarmingly distanced now. The detachment was progressive and natural. There wasn’t a specific day when new songs stopped resonating with me, but they stopped making me feel anything. The magic just disappeared. When did this happen?
At its core, music can make life bearable. Lost in the rhythm often comes an escape that can be healing. For me, that continues to be the case with old songs. There used to be this authenticity in Hindi music that could give meaning to life’s various emotions. Now, more often than not, we’re stuck with remixed renditions of the same songs that are either copies or the ones that ruin the originals for us.
The so-called new tracks seem to come from a factory that mass-produces songs. They are all too refined or too similar for their own good. There’s a lack of feeling. Again, this is not the story for every song because, fortunately, we do get some great tracks even now, but it’s rare and it does not necessarily come from mainstream cinema. Besides, overall, that great connection is lost in some ways.
You see, the charm of mainstream Hindi music as it once was feels tainted now. So, when an artist like Sunidhi Chauhan appears on Raj Shamani’s podcast and addresses some of these visible changes in the Hindi music industry, you want to know. Especially as someone who still goes back to their old playlist because most new songs just don’t have it in them, especially because Sunidhi and her contemporaries were the ones who defined music for you.
“Inspiration bolke bechte hain apne aapko. Copy, copy hota hai, agar same note sunayi de raha hai toh copy hai. Agar inspired hai, toh same tune nahin hogi, it will be in the same lines of the same tune”, she said, clarifying the difference between inspiration and straight-up copying. Expectedly, as it turns out, copying is very common.
Remixes and such unneeded ‘inspirations’ often steal take away from the feelings their original track once aroused. However, it’s not only about how the songs feel, there’s a stark difference in how they’re made too. When a prolific songwriter like Javed Akhtar wrote a song like ‘Dard-E-Disco’ that seemingly made no sense yet was a banger, it was because the film’s script demanded it to be so. The song had to fit the context of the story and amplify the emotions. But that is not how it is done now.
“Aaj kal film ko lekar script ke sath baithke uske liye gaane bante nahin hain jaise pehle hota tha…ab gaane bank mein hote hain”, Sunidhi said, revealing how the artists and music directors now don’t know about where and when the song will release while they’re recording it.
Then comes that infamous practice of auto-tuning. Here’s the thing, and Sunidhi clarified it herself, auto-tuning in itself isn’t a malicious practice if used correctly. But it’s being overdone now to an extent that each singer’s voice feels vaguely familiar to another. While Sunidhi herself doesn’t like to use it, it’s become an industry norm where many singers come to the recording studio assured they will be auto-tuned, and they won’t have to worry about pitching their voice correctly.
Not only the music, but even the music-related reality shows, or all reality shows, in general, appear inauthentic today. Gone are the days we would route for an Abhijeet Sawant or an Amit Sana, or really anticipate the new season of an Indian Idol or a Sa Re Ga Ma Pa. You know reality shows aren’t anymore, and this realisation prompted Sunidhi to drift away from them. When they began crafting stories for content’s sake.
“Now what you hear on TV is all doctored, it’s all corrected”, she said speaking of reality shows. “They wanna make sure there’s no bad singer on their show”.
Furthermore, she revealed how the creators would pick a contestant they wanted to take ahead in the show and urge the jury to say good things about them. That contestant was selected based on multiple criteria, like how they looked or how they were as live performers because channels would want to milk them beyond the reality show. It’s business, after all.
When we speak of the diminished charm of the mainstream Hindi music industry, it’s mainly about how the business-making model of big labels or big channels has stolen music’s core feeling we identify with. But, there are artists like Sunidhi herself who haven’t changed their ways despite having spent decades in the industry. Artists who sing from their hearts, artists like Arijit Singh, for that matter.
About Arijit, Sunidhi thinks he’s the brand he is probably because he’s still a student and doesn’t love himself enough, he doesn’t think he’s Arijit Singh. “He loves to listen to other people, loves to adapt from other people, other singers that he likes. He sings their songs onstage in his own concert. It does not have to be Lata ji, Kishore Kumar ji, it can be a new singer’s song also. For him, he just wants to make music. He doesn’t want to be heard. He just sings, we want to hear him”.
Perhaps that is the secret of singers who still connect to us, who strike a chord with our hearts. They simply sing, and they sing with feelings, with their hearts.
I have never been to Sunidhi Chauhan’s concert, but I’ve seen the videos, and I want to be there for once because I know it would be a surreal experience. Artists like her make music alive. You can lose yourself to it. You see, that escape can make life more bearable. We need more music and a good one at that. It’s integral to life itself.
