Originally Posted by
sloshed
It is very actually easy to define Raja’s peak time. Assemble Raja fans (more the better), get their playlists stored in CD’s, phones, etc. Arrange the songs that have been heard more often by year and once you do that you will find that it won’t be a uniform distribution and certainly the distribution curve will not have its peak after 2010. Now that is not to say, there would not be any data after 2010, off course there are ardent fans like you who will fill up that space.
The point I am trying to make is, there was a time, we didn’t need intelligent people to analyze a raja’s song. The songs found us. People gulped and wanted more. People would guess the movies based on their themes. Now, these days, when a Raja’s album is released we try to look for that song. All these albums that’s you mentioned, (I agree you might like all the songs in all the albums), he was just one among the other composers of today’s cinema. There was a time he was THE composer of cinema. That was his PEAK. The peak is certainly not today when reviewers comment on other composers best songs and call it “it sounds so raja’ish”
If you were to ask me or other fans, whether you would take any songs from these albums to their graves, the answer would be bleak. Now his background scores have always been phenomenal. That’s why I said, even he treats the songs as another thing to do.
I would still maintain that he is not challenged. When I see a director come and say “he composed all the songs in 30 minutes”. I really feel like slapping their faces. Spend time, lay out the platform for him, complicate him, pick his brain. Myshkin did it. “Look Raja, no songs. Show me you can carry my movie without it”. And he gladly obliged.
Interestingly my favorite album in the recent years was “NEP”, because of the way each song was layered in composition. Every song sounded like symphony and every instrument seemed to have their own musical sheet that spoke to each other the way only Raja could. A lot of music composers would agree that NEP was a superior technical achievement. I was hoping it would bag all the awards. Yet it never won anything substantial or may nothing at all. Blame it on a bad film.
Yet the film that won that year on every department was “Kumki”. As I started listening to Kumki, it was a good album on its own right, it was made for the movie. NEP didn’t not require a Hungarian Orchestra. And guess what an “average” fan who still exalts at Raja’s music found Kumki more attractive to him. I don’t blame him. You could always argue it’s the success of the movie that determines the success of the songs, but I have seen this man, create master pieces from movies that should have been burnt at the censor board.
Anyways sorry for the long post. Keep the conversation flowing. I hope I have not offended anyone. Its all in my humble opinion