Dochey: This is the stand-out song in the album as it has this funky arrangement with the steady hip-hop beat(which is the same as “Gangasta Blues” from Slumdog Millionaire). Lady Kash & krissy don’t have much to do but the hook, which is pretty neat. Shreya Ghoshal breezes off as expected. What I didn’t get is the total character change from pallavi to charanam for Shreya’s vocals. The pallavi vocals are more sensual but in charanam, a lot more importance was given to melody by loosing the sensual flavor of the pallavi, which seemed totally out of character. The tune is perfectly fine, I wish the sensual flavor was carried across the whole song.
Amma Thalli: The first thing that strikes in this song is the female vocals, where the tempo is faster than the song’s tempo. This is a great experiment by AR and works wonderful for the song. I didn’t get the raga change from pallavi to charanam, but after repeated hearings and listening to the lyrics carefully, I realized what the intent was. This song actually explores the different shades of the girl pestering the guy. Hence the raga change. Compare the song mood/sequence to “Adavari Matalaku Ardhale Veeru le” song from Kushi.
Maralante: This is typical AR stuff and has a very good tune which represents melancholy, and standing up to the challenge from it. The “maa telugu thalli” chorus was good but could have been executed better. It’s a great feeling to hear “maa telugu thalli” wordings in AR’s vocals. All in all a pretty standard AR number.
Maham Maye: The hook is really catchy here and the pallavi is really good. Charanam has nothing to catch on to. Increasingly, AR songs are having this trend where in you just have to listen to what is going on at that point of the song without comparing it to any other part of the song, meaning you might not find much connection to pallavi and charanam but both are good in their own terms. This is a prime example of such a trend.
Power Star: I hate the hook “Power Star” here, it’s too clichéd, and there is nothing much to write about this song, it could have been so much better and explosive but just falls flat.It’s just a subpar attempt in making a break out song.
Nammakame: This is typical AR stuff and is very similar to “oo palan hare” from Lagaan. No experimentation or nothing new to hear in this one.
Overall it’s a below average album from AR, with some very good experiments without taking into account the bad pronunciation across all songs. I think the main culprit is the lyrics. There are a lot of places where the lyrics didn’t fit the tune and hence the butchering of the language by the singers. It’s very important for a lyricist to understand the tune, know what syllables would be right and at the same time convey the message that needs to be conveyed.
Some how I feel post 90ties, direct telugu albums of AR, are not good nor bad, they’re just plain weird. It would be great if someone successfully extracts the “telugudanam” in the tunes from AR, but unfortunately this is not the one, and I doubt if this album will get any future hearings from me after a while.
