New to Milliblog? If you like what you read here, may I suggest subscribing to Milliblog's RSS feed or e-mail alerts?. Thanks for visiting!

KK and Shilpa Rao complement each other beautifully in Khuda jaane - a sweeping melody accentuated by excellent chorus, while Lucky boy, follows a predictable tune, but with a catchy rhythm that works. With Jesse Cook-like guitar and Khuda hafiz’ish tune (Lucky Ali factor?), Ahista ahista too is interesting. Shekhar’s voice differentiates the otherwise trademark Yashraj, Jogi mahi. Small town girl sounds more like the trio’s music - Shankar building on the addictive hook quite well. The everlasting title song’s remix is a punchy new avatar with zingy rap intrusions by Vishal. A step behind De taali, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Keywords: Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Minissha Lamba, Bipasha Basu

The title song is breezy and likeable with hummable lyrics. College’s nostalgic lyrics is sappy and predictable, along with a contrived tune while composer Shan Rahman’s Let me tell U is boring. Masha Allah is however neat, with folk’ish, catchy and interesting hooks while the hip-hop’ish Palavattam simply rocks with its hep and funny attitude! O saathiya is slow and grating but Peythu’s poignant tune gels well with Vineeth’s vocals. Poonkuyile is rather filmy but the haunting tune makes up for it, along with Shan’s imaginative backgrounds. Coffee @ MG Road is really a mixed bag that is selectively endearing.

Keywords: Vineeth Srinivasan, Salim Kumar, Shan Rahman, Malayalee

The title song by Calvin Broadus featuring a ‘poonjabi’ Snoop Dogg is straight Doggy ishtyle, but in the Indian milieu this hip hop mix is rather bland. Pritam’s variant of the title song, Bas ek king, on the other hand, is bang-on with excellent vocals by Mika and Neeraj Shridhar. Jee Karda and Talli hua are catchy but strictly assembly-line, while Daler infuses life into the raucous Bhootni ke. The lovely Teri ore, sung with verve by Shreya and Rahat takes a curious Celtic turn. A couple of decent tracks don’t add up to the hype the Kinng has generated!

Note: Wondering who Calvin Broadus is? That’s Snoop Dogg’s real name :-). The ‘Singh is Kinng’ title song is composed by Calvin Broadus along with the RDB trio - Surjeet Singh, Manjeet Ral and Kuldeep Ral.

Keywords: Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, Junglee Music, Sonu Sood, Snoop Dogg

Cinema cinema starts eulogizing the medium, but ends up heaping praises on Rajinikant and getting inflation wrong – cinema for Rs. 10? Saaral and Sollamma sound like outdated, sparsely lilting Rahman rejects - the former is perhaps THE Nayantara ’scene paattu’, so why bother about the tune? Daler Mehndi minces and spits out Rajinikant film names in a silly Om zaarare while in Perinba pechukkaaran, GVP rehashes his Veyilodu track, right up to Kailash Kher’s vocals. GV Prakash Kumar gets it all wrong in Kuselan’s soundtrack. But, since a Rajinikant film is always about his screen presence, P.Vasu – over to you!

Keywords: Rajinikant, Nayantara, Pasupathy, Meena, GV Prakashkumar

Why don’t singers realize they are only as good as the tunes composed for them? The so-called Indi-pop singers, in particular! Getting a perennially sidelined composing duo is the first blunder. Granted, Sajid Wajid scored big time in Partner, but given their track record of non-descript and uninteresting music, Telugu pop singer Smita should’ve guessed the fate of her debut Hindi album. Not that she’s any better. With a couple of crappy albums in Telugu and one terrible remix album in Tamil, wonder what gave her the confidence to go national! Stay far away from this joke of an album.

Keywords: Whatever!

Anu Malik not only has Sukhwinder contorting his overused vocals but also wastes Shilpa Rao in the pathetic Main sajda. The title song is even worse - Adnan sounding as uninterested as he can. Krishna’s Soniya aaja ni takes the album further down - one tedious experience! Thankfully, the album is nearly saved by the Lucky Ali - Vasundhara Das duet Nazar mein hai chehra. With its middle eastern tune and arrangements, the track is fairly interesting even though it hardly sounds like a Anu Malik song! This humdrum soundtrack may not bring to this film, what the title asserts!

Keywords: Aryeman, Sayali Bhagat, Ranvir Shorey, Lucky Ali, Annu Malik

Hara hara sambo has a rather likeable rhythm but a strictly average tune made lively by Jassie Gift’s enthusiastic vocals. Krishna krishna and Nenjil aathaadi are plain annoying signifying the composer’s early, massy and mundane compositions. Even Neenda mounam and Pudhiya paravai ondru are strongly reminiscent of Vidyasagar’s late 90s melodies, shorn of the mature and evolved spin he adds these days. Alibaba’s soundtrack has the usually dependable composer in terrible form. It’s strange actually – the music he has given here is completely outdated and seems like they’re selected from his song bank from the 90s. Vidyasagar’s disappointing streak continues!

Keywords: Krishna, Janani, Vidyasagar

Nope, this post is not about music/ movies, for a change! Given the number of blogs springing in India every day, it seems to me that blogs, as a medium is being taken seriously just recently. More celebs are blogging and they’re making news for airing their opinion. The earlier model was such that they aired their views discretely to a journalist who added spice and published it. Now, a star of Amitabh’s stature blogs and publishes his opinion online, himself. Whether he was paid an obscene amount to do so by a questionable Ambani is besides the point

The reason for this prelude? The results of perhaps the first ever Asia-Pacific wide survey of bloggers. This was a survey conducted by public relations firm Text 100, on a range of topics including bloggers’ attitude to Public Relations outreach and what sort of content they prefer. The aim was to better understand bloggers as an audience, how they like to work, and how Public Relations professionals and their clients can better engage with them.

Out of the 125 predominantly tech/ business/ news bloggers surveyed, Indian bloggers secured maximum participation! On an APAC level that is mighty impressive.

Considering many regular readers and visitors to Milliblog are bloggers themselves, this may be relevant. Text 100 has also released the results of this survey in the form of India’s first social media news release (SMNR). The SMNR is a new form of the age-old press release and adopts the so-called web 2.0 tools/ tactics to make it more presentable to the online media, in particular.

So, here goes - the results of India’s first ever bloggers’ survey (PDF, 1.67 MB) | Social Media News Release announcing the results.

Disclosure: I work for Text 100 and was part of the team that facilitated this survey in India.

Four of Yuvan Shankar Raja’s tried and tested tunes from the Telugu hit, Adavari Matalaku Ardhale Verule make the cut in this soundtrack. Nee chumu and Mandaara with Rajesh Krishnan, sounding very much like Mano and SPB are expectedly neat. Hey baby continues to annoy while Minugu fails due to Gurukiran and Apoorva’s rendition. But composer Gurukiran swoops up the soundtrack right under Yuvan’s nose with the lively Modala - Kunal Ganjawala impresses with his effortless singing. Gurukiran’s other track, the forlorn Antu intu too is notable! This dual composer soundtrack has at least 4 good tracks going for it!

Keywords: Ramya, Yuvan Shankar Raja, Aditya Babu, antu intu preetu bantu

Given the starkly folk influence in the film’s theme, it’s no surprise to hear Vidyasagar dipping into traditional villupaattu-like tunes for Kattipudikkum karadiya and Kodaangi vandhirukken. Both are steeped in extremely familiar folk tunes, but with utterly disjoint structures. But Potta kuruviyo is vintage Vidyasagar with a lovely melody wrapped in a pleasing, mod orchestration. Kombuvitta kaalaiyenna is rousing and rhythmic like a standard hero intro track should be! The Imayamalayum remix is haphazard and painfully messy. Barring Potta kuruviyo, Vidyasagar’s tunes fall completely flat at least in the soundtrack – they may perhaps add better value to the movie, visually.

Keywords: Bharath, Vidyasagar, muniyandi