A remake of a remake. Review on Billa 2007 Songs

Strange things can always happen like me writing a review on

>music **albums ...

Billa (Tamil, starring Rajini) was a remake of the Hindi Original Don. And Don getting remade with Sharukh seems to have triggered something down south as well. Kollywood(? there are so many *woods that I get confused) takes the same route to remake the remake. Have never heard of such a concept before, but we get to see 4 different flavours of the same story.

Before you get confused, this is a review on the music and the movie is yet to be released. I happened to watch the trailers and I was surprised that it was very stylish. Naturally there was some expectation inside me about the music as well, especially because it was from Yuvan shankar Raja.

I got to hear the songs online. It was when I reached down to the 5th track, I relaxed a bit. The velayya song was folkish. Not exactly a foot tapping number but was a great relief from the first four, which were not exactly noisy nonsense but just a little better. Yuvan is the best when it comes to classifying music for movies. He gives his classic best for classic movies and 'mass appealing' ones for the commercial ones. Even when you listen to the songs for the first time you know that this album belongs to the second category or at least tries to belong.

The first track was the remix of 'My name is Billa ...'. Remixes are so common these days and in a remake it was not surprising. Cannot say this one was bad, but fails to impress. The two songs 'Sei edhavadhu sei..' and 'Nan meendum naan aga vendum' started promisingly, but grows into just noise that I tried adjusting my equalizer settings to check if it was a problem with my speaker or something. The theme music was bearable as a standalone piece. Might gel reasonably well with the movie set in Malaysia. Just to get my counts right, let me mention that there was another song which I hardly remember.

Most good movies have good music. But the music was disappointing here. After 'Vaali' I don't remember one very good Ajith movie. And after witnessing all the craps that have come along since then, I knew I should not expect much.  But the trailers made me get off the perception that wherever Ajith is, there would be crap. It was a triumph of hope over experience. But the album has made me come back to conscience.

Anyways, you will happen to hear the songs over and over on 93.5s and 98.3s ... So dont bother buying a CD. And if possible wait for someone to watch the movie. You dont risk!

Smiles,

Envyram