#43 ஆடுங்கள் பாடுங்கள் பிள்ளைப்பொன்வண்டுகள்
(குரு, 1980)
What a sweet prelude of guitar / strings! Another bass-guitar special with arresting rhythm arrangements and happy singing by SPB!
Traditional benevolent hero song (running / taking care of / showering love on orphanage / destitute children). Popular genre of prior biggies' era (chellakkiLikaLAm paLLiyilE, siriththu vAzha vENdum) and continued by the next biggies (pEsum maNi muththu rOjAkkaL, AdungaL pAdungaL, muththu maNichchudarE vA / kadavuL uLLamE), always enjoyable songs with great emotional connect! Looking from the Disney angle, a seriously untapped area in TF/IF where the movies / music could have made it really big. Still, whatever we received as part of the "mix-everything-in-one-bag-masAlA-packaging" had decent emotional connect and provided some musical richness / entertainment quotient!
Melody/tune formats of MDs prior to IR era were mostly ICM-style IMO. That is, a "flowing, running" melody forming the backbone of the song with orchestration / instruments as 'pakka vAththiyams'. Even at the time of arrival, IR started to have this - what I call - 'broken-up-tune' structure with 'machchAnappAththeengaLA'. He created a problem for bathroom singers with the instrumental part between 'pAththeengaLA' and 'mala vAzhai"...the chords, many people tried to do that with mouth
It was one of the conditions during our holidays at grand parents' home that 'NO singing of instrumentals!'. So, some IR songs obviously posed problems for such family sessions.
During 70's, IR's proportion of such songs were relatively less IMO as he probably tried to please the industry jAmbavAns who had to be satisfied with MSV-ish / KVM-ish traditional melody styles. (Is this what probably Plum meant in his post for preference of 70's IR?)
With 80's, IR becoming more powerful in the industry, the proportion of such "problem songs with broken-up-tune" drastically increased, IMO. 'AdungaL' pallavi is one such example where the IR instrumental magic between 'AdungaL' and 'pAdungaL' could make singers with no instrumental support to feel miserable.
It's also possible that with this style change in place, IR was more inclined towards 'meterukku matter' working style. (All these are my guesses and musically untrained opinions, Sureshji and others please correct / comment if the understanding is not too much off the facts)...
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