LIST OF SOME OF THE BEST TAMIL SONGS RELEASED IN OCTOBER THIS YEAR - TAKE A LOOK!

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Adiye

I listened to the song and I was simply blown away, I knew from the start that this track will make it right to the top. Dhibu Ninan Thomas I believe deserves way more opportunities, or maybe he is being very picky in his projects, either way he really scores, when he scores. For those of you who want to hear some of his other splendid tracks, listen to “Othaiyadi pathayile” from the album ‘Kanaa’ and “Pesatha Mozhiye” from ‘Kombuvacha Singamda’. This track is a further move away from repetition, and if the first was a folk and second a semi-classical melody, this one is modern day alt-pop in its roots. It is a testament to Dhibu’s skill as a composer but the track I feel belongs to Kapil Kapilan and this is one of the best vocal performances of 2021 and I am saying it after listening to around 8000 songs released in India in this year so far.  He simply is near perfect in his delivery in what is a very tough song to negotiate. There are other amazing stalwarts at work here as well with Keba Jeremiah on guitars and Naveen Napier on the bass guitars, and their contribution kicks off straight from the start. Sruthiraj is excellent on percussions with various sounds adding to the rhythm. The humming is well arranged and we have Avinash Satish and Hariharan as the recording engineers. The interlude has some splendid rhythm and beats accompanied by Rithu Vyshak’s brilliance on the Violin, Viola and Cello. Kalyani Nair has done all the strings arrangements. Dhibu cleverly uses vocal sounds both for harmonies and rhythm all through the track with mixing by Balu Thankachan and mastering by Shadab Rayeen. Kapil manages to captivate you with every note he sings in the verse and you should just surrender to it. The lyrics are penned by GKB. The end aalap is a masterclass by Kapil

Ammamma

Jai the actor who came on the silver screen like Vijay’s clone has acted in a few movies and he has this peculiar voice which is unmistakable. But I never knew he could compose music. Here he is scoring for the movie “Shiva Shivaa Win Aattam Arambam”. He sounds like a pro and not a debutant with 2 very good songs in the album. This breezy track is sung by Haricharan and Archana Sabesh. The song has an excellent flute solo in many places by Nathan, and there is also a vast strings section comprising of violas from Imam Mohan Chandru, Yensone, Anita Feggan, Vinaykumar, violins by Venkatesh Murali, Sasi, Balaji Gopinath, Dhanasekar, Feggan and Vijay Basker and Cello by Viji Srinivas and finally the Double Bass by Bindu. The charanam also is quite elaborate with drums/Taiko and percussion by Derrik. Mani is on the bass guitars and Kevin Steve is on the acoustic version. Siva Subramaniyam’s Veena interventions happen at the right places, and Archana makes a late entry right at the end of the track. The lyrics are penned by Yugabharathi with additional programming by Bobo Sashi, and mixing and mastering by AH Rahmathullah. Chandrasekari does the co-ordination. The male harmonies comprises of Krishna, Murugesh, Mc.Ak, Muba, Hyte Karti, Rico, Darryl, Yogi, Pavan, Arvind and the Female harmonies by Swagatha S. Krishnan, Lavita Lobo, Padmaja. The other excellent song in the album is Kaadamutta sung by Anal Akash which has some excellent vocals and has a rural folk texture. Here too we have the flute, rhythms and strings section dominating the scene.

'Knockout Song'

‘Kannale Pesi Pesi Kollathe’, is what I could straight away think of when Nikhil Mathew’s whistle starts things off. Madley Blues comprising of Prashant Techno and Harish Venkat create this wonderful retro track and Anirudh Ravichander uses his greatest asset, his vocals to bring the track to life. This is the first single from "Arasiyalla Idhellam Saadharnamappa" and we have these funny interesting lyrics penned by Vignesh Shivn. The attitude and style with which Anirudh sings, clearly makes this one memorable and watchout for some creative interventions on the violin by Raghavasimhan. Keba Jeremiah plays the classical and bass guitars, and the most enjoyable part of the track also comes from the rhythms by Venkat and Ganapathy. The interlude on violins is fast and furious and Madley Blues take credit for the arrangements and production as well. The track is Mixed and Mastered by Navneeth Balachanderan. The stanza has some male harmonies and it sort of sounds like the humming rabbabba rabbabbare from “Puthu Mappilaikku”.

‘Namakken Aararivu’

This is a wonderful song for its simple music in MS Vishwanathan style that retains a lot of melody and focuses heavily on the words and message like how Kannadasan would do. The Australian forest fire and its massive impact on the environment and human lives led to the creation of this track. Shriraam Sachi has composed, written and sung this along with Sukanya Varadarajan. Akkarsh Kasyap is on fire with his solo violins which somehow is symbolic of Nero playing the Violin when Rome was under the destruction of fire. “Namakken Aararivu” is a very scathing but pertinent question on human beings and their way of life. The guitars are played by Daniel Asir Jayaraj while Shriraam and Sanathan Shree Krishnan handle the programming. Daniel and Sananthan are also the recording engineers. Akkarsh is the Hero not Nero of the track.

Nee Yenadharuginil

Vishal Chandrasekar had a blockbuster hit with “oh Manapenne” and I myself have reviewed two other splendid songs from the same album viz. ‘Lazy song’ and ‘Bodhai Maname’ and this one is a breezy slow romantic number sung by one of our finest Shaktisree Gopalan. The texture of her vocals is something to die for and she leverages it brilliantly in the track and so does the composer. The simplicity of the track is astounding as Vishal just uses a solo acoustic guitar and a simple rhythm to achieve this. The use of harmonies is a smart move in the stanza. Niranjan Bharathi writes the lovely lyrics, and you can just enjoy the outro guitars and Melodica.

Nenjae Nenjae

Sam CS is a respected musician in the industry and he does a fabulous job whether it is songs of BGM scores for the movies. This is sung by Karthik and Jonita Gandhi for the movie Borrder. The track has some similarity to AR Rahman number where there is a good mix of melody and modern programmed sounds. The track has a very enjoyable shift when Jonita comes on boars and starts delivering her lines. Everything happens so fast that the notes are excellently shifted in the Anu Pallavi. Onasis Mohan produces, mixes, and masters the track with all guitars played Keba Jeremiah. The charanam begins with such splendid notes and credit entirely goes to Sam for this composition. Viveka supports with his words and Bhuvana Ananth is the indispensable music supervisor. Anbumani and Avinash Sathish are the recording engineers.

Pi Pi Dum Dum

It starts off and takes me back many decades in time to “Aduthathu Ambujatha” which was an iconic song in all of Tamil music. Krithika Nelson is a musician that caught my attention a few months ago with a splendid track called Nee/Naan and like I have always claimed, there can be nothing more gratifying than listening to a composer who knows exactly what she wants to express and executes it with perfection. Now let us go back to this track at hand I love the visual imagery that is conveyed brilliantly through the singing, instrumental programming, and arrangements. The Thavil is positioned perfectly and the rhythms programming must be applauded. Krithika has composed, written, and sung this one, and isn’t she rising? What absolutely thrills me is that she just shifted gears and planes from her Nee/Naan which had pathos and sobriety to Pi Pi Dum Dum which is a rush of sugar and spice coated all over a joyful wedding scene. The vocals add important layers to the track and this is where Arjun Chidambaram is involved. The “Pi pi pi” humming is excellent and reminds me a lot of Dhee’s texture and tonality, and Arjun takes up the lead position also singing some lines in between.

The “I am only here for the sappaduppa” is witty and relevant considering how true it is for most people attending weddings. The acoustic and bass guitars provide just enough string support without disturbing whatever transpires in the foreground. The Nadaswaram has a Lo-fi modulation which is interesting and to put all the Pi Pi and Dum Dum as vocal sounds rather than instruments is innovative. I can see how this song can certainly be a very good choice to be played during the marriage season as a nice ice-breaker between the bride and bridegroom's families. The track is produced by Jerin C Raj and mixed and mastered by Mervin T Thomas. In all fairness, I have come to expect even more from Krithika and that is not a bad thing for any artist to hear. Her singing and creativity stand apart in this one but she needs to and she can extract much more from her repository to give us all music of even higher quality. The lyrical video has some funny and apt animation by Shyam Kabi who has also done the VFX. S Manikandan handles the art direction and illustration

Saara Saara Kaattrae

Imman gets two monumental singers of today in this track viz. Sid Sriram and his most dependable Shreya Ghoshal. The track is set in Sindhubhairavi raagam and that becomes quite evident from the get-go itself. We have Yugabharathi on the lyrics and he becomes the emotion of love to great effect here. It is only in Imman’c composition that we get an elaborate Pallavi and Anupallavi and that too with so many variations and believe me a lot of songs these days would end right here without any scope. Shreya Ghoshal kills this one and it is probably one of her best for Imman and Sid also plays the role of the perfect companion. The Chennai Strings Orchestra is in full flow in this track conducted by Yensone Bagyanathan with Violins by Rex Issac, Ramachandran, Sasi, Murali, BG Venkatesh, George, Mohan, Dhayalan, David Ling, Samson, Prabhu, Ruben, Bhaskar, Vijayabhaskar, Jayakumar, Selva, Shiva, Sekar, Seenu, Narayana Rao and Manoj. The Violas are played by Sebastian, Balu, Hemanth, Girijan, Selva, Gopi Chandran, Anita, Joseph, Cyril, Dinakar, Vinaykumar. The Cellos are played by Sekar, Somnath, Francis, and Seenu, while Basses are played by Bidhyut and Suresh. This song will be your favorite in the album if you love a meandering melody.

The other good number in this movie is Annaatthe Annaatthe which is a celebration of the genius called SPB. The song has an amazing combination of trumpets and synth programming with a chorus singing ‘thalaiva’, and all this sets the perfect tone for what is about to come. SPB singing the title and you feel goosebumps, and these 2 seconds are enough to show how insurmountable he was. The lyrics are penned by Viveka and the words are spectacularly larger than life and that is exactly what the masses want to experience. Keba Jeremiah’s guitars are in play here especially the bass. The Indian percussions we hear are arranged by Kaviraj and make us feel like the days of “singanadai pottu sigarathil eru” are back. Maxwell’s trumpet is excellent right from the beginning but the harmonies comprising of solid singers like Santhosh Hariharan, Deepak, Shenbagaraj, Aravind, Srinivas, Narayanan, Vignesh Narayanan, Veena Murali, Sowmya Mahadevan, Deepthi Suresh, Abinaya Shenbagaraj, Ala B Bala, Soundarya, Nandakumar. The interlude has a female chorus and has a moment where the notes suddenly drop like you wouldn’t expect. The kid's chorus consists of Neha, Idhazhika, Dhanyasri, Shivathmika, and Sahana. The entire album is mastered by Shadab Rayeen with assistance from Pukraj and Milan, while Imman mixes, composes, records, and arranges every track in it. The percussions are played by Babu, Pradeep, Raja, Balu, Manoj, Saravanan, David, Chiranjeevi and Azhagiri.

Sendumalli

Sean Roldan is back with a bang, and after his not-so-successful indie music forays, he summons his higher powers in composing for this wonderful album “Jai Bhim”. Two splendid singers are called in to deliver this romantic melody viz. Ananthu and Kalyani Nair. Sean has brilliantly used the female harmonies here comprising of Kalyani, Sushmitha Narasimhan, and Padmaja Sreenivasan while the Male harmonies have some amazing talent as well in Manoj Krishna and Pranjal, and all the harmonies are arranged by Kalyani. The song has in my opinion an influence on HamirKalyani raagam and maybe some Saranga raga also. Ananthu and Kalyani are flawless in delivering the song with great style. KJ Vijay's flute solo dominated the first interlude and all the guitars we hear like the Nylon, acoustic, and bass are played by the ever-dependable Aalap Raju. The flute, guitars, and female backing vocals present a very Ilaiyaraja texture to the song and it has always been one of Sean’s many USPs. The track is mixed and mastered by Sai Shravanam. The other two tracks I love from the album are ‘Thala Kodhum’ and ‘Power’. The guitars begin and sound like “Love Polladhadhu” and Pradeep Kumar nails the vocals with lyrics written by director Rajumuruguan. For this track, Keba Jeremiah plays the Acoustic and Nylon guitars while Aalaap Raju is on the bass. The moment Vikram Rozario’s thumping rhythms begin the track is more fun and it reminds me of “Kodi Arivu” by Sean himself. KJ Vijay plays the flute and Rajhesh Vaidya is scintillating on his Veena in the interludes. “The wonderful lines” Nikkama Munneru, Kannoru yen kanniru, anboda kai seru” do bring tears when you hear them. ‘Power’ is more of an anthem that boosts your spirit and that is obvious when Arivu writes and sings. The electrifying voice and words of Dr. Ambedkar himself come in the song. The El Fe Choir with additional vocals from Manoj Krishna, Sai Vignesh, and Shibi Srinivasan feels empowering. The song is also a testament to Sean’s skill and diverse abilities. Joseph Vijay’s astounding electric guitars give it a rock flavor. Ravi G handles the savvy synths and it is a fun track to hear the rhythms by Vicky and additional rhythms by Manoj Krishna. D. Balasubramani’s Nadaswaram is an interesting addition to the scheme of things.

'Sengaandhale'

C Sathya is consistently good, and even in a movie that did not quite do well, his music stands out. I have already reviewed a couple of excellent tracks from this movie “Aranmanai 3” in the earlier monthly reviews, and Reema sings this lullaby.  The track is programmed, composed, and arranged by Sathya, and Reema’s vocals are supported by Ritesh Pillai on the Piano. The pathos in the song sink with the emergence of strings conducted by Yensone Bagyanathan. The violin solo is played by Adeline Cynthia, Balaji, Abner Williams, and Aishwarya(UK) and they just melt your heart in the interludes and in the end segment. In the segment where Reema sings “Jenmam ondru pothathendu” I could sense “sindhinen ratham sindhinen” from Ilaiyaraja’s Oora Therinjikitten and I was tempted to say that maybe the track has some mild influence of Keeravani raga. The track is mixed and mastered by award-winning sound engineer Sai Shravanam and the deeply emotional words are written by Pa Vijay.

Uchanthala Regayile

It is amazing to see Karthik Raja make a comeback, as he was once touted to be the true musical progeny of Maestro Ilaiyaraja. I have always felt that he had tremendous potential and he did display glimpses in his movies in the late 1990s and early 2000s but lost in the race to his younger brother Yuvan. Director Mysskin keeps his loyalty to Raja sir in-tact by offering the chance for his new movie Pisasu 2. The song is sung with a huge emotional uplift by Sid Sriram, and the song has all the stamp of Karthik in composition and arrangements as well. The track may be inspired by Simmendramadhyamam raga in Carnatic music as it reminds me of “Thalattum Poongattru” and “Anandha Raagam” by Maestro. The lyrics are touching and impressively written by Kabilan, with Biju James doing the recordings and Tapas Nayak mixing and mastering the track. I wish there were more details, like the wonderful strings playing in the background deserve credits. Karthik maintains his dad’s legacy of having a wonderful interlude and the verse is excellently composed as well. Enjoy the flowing symphony of violins just before the landing from the charanam to the anu-pallavi. Sid Sriram delivers this one with impressive efficacy.

Uravenum Vazhiyea

Sushin Shyam is one of the very best in our country today and this young composer is smashing it every time he is handed an opportunity to score. The most impressive part is that he does the score for the A-list actors like Fahad Fazil (Malik), Tovino Thomas (Minnal Murali), and Dulqer Salman (Kurup, which is this album). Haripriya, a Super Singer star has made a mark for herself in the Telugu and Tamil music industry and it is nice to see her shine in this Tamil version of a song from a Mollywood musician. The splendid strings we hear are from a one-man quartet by the uber-talented Rithu Vysakh and the track is mixed and mastered by Abin Paul. RP Bala has penned the Tamil lyrics. There is so much intense mystery when we hear the strings and the synthesizers. Haripriya is stunning in the delivery of lyrics and the humming bits too. The whole texture of the songs feels like something out of a larger-than-life situation, maybe a James Bond movie. The disco music sounds are probably to take us back to the 70s and 80s a period to which the movie’s story belongs. The stanza also has a mild shift in its tonality and feels like a melody from yesteryears. This track is bound to be one smashing hit across all languages. The closest I could think of in the tone, singing, and even maybe a raga influence was “Meendum Meendum va” by Ilaiyaraja which is set in Dharmavati.

Yathi Yathi

Abhishek CS impressed last year with Sandali and there was a feature in this monthly review back then. This one takes it a notch higher having Anuradha Sriram and Yazin Nizar in the lead singing roles. The best part about this track is that it takes you on a ride like a roller-coaster and you just can’t predict how the song will meander. The use of the thavil is splendid as it plays lightly with Yazin’s vocals in the foreground. The bass guitars by Naveen Napier and thumping beats by Shruthi Raj act as wonderful aids to the track moving forward. There are definite traces of Abheri raga in this track but Abhishek makes sure it's kept to a bare minimum. The song has a very likable video and has become a huge hit thanks to Ashwin's presence on screen. The title line is such a racy segment that just induces you to dance and we have then the rock star Anuradha who just sizzles with that voice and delivery, and behold the magic when she reaches for the higher scales. The track is arranged by Abhishek, with programming by Eazhisaivendhan and mixing and mastering by Abin Pushpakaran. Ram Ganesh writes witty lyrics. Yazin’s singing is phenomenal and he is known to perform with an innate vocal range that is wider than most. Shruthi has a field day with all her fabulous rhythm and percussions

LINK - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnzHXmlVC7nq8e4R4Rx8Q9RghUop6crIj