Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Chords and notes

Aishwarya Rai in a still from `Umrao Jaan'

UMRAO JAAN

T Series, Rs.160

This new version of Umrao Jaan has seven songs, and barring one or two of them, they are nowhere near those of the earlier version. Javed Akhtar's poetry is good but the choice of singers seems to have gone wrong. Alka Yagnik is gently teasing in Salam but extremely dull in Pehle Pehle and Ek Roothe Huye Dil Ki. Though in Pooch Rahe Hai, she is close to being satisfactory, it leaves a listener wondering what made music director Anu Malik not think of Asha Bhonsle for it. In Behka Diya Hamein, Sonu Nigam tries to improvise his voice to fit the film's hero Abhishek Bachchan, but in the process, the duet with Alka Yagnik ends up sounding more like the Gharonda number Is Shehar Mein.

Richa Sharma's rich voice has done justice to the superb emotions woven in the poetry of Agla Janam Mohe Bitiya..

PARIS HILTON, PARIS

Virgin Records, CD, Rs. 395

For those who cringe at the very sight of this album, we have to set the record straight. Paris Hilton knows music.

Indeed, unlike the rest of us, she's probably even heard it being played more than once. Let's face it, Paris was inevitable.

After all, in a world where Hillary Duff and Lindsay Lohan can put out albums, could Hilton be that far? Never mind that the only time she seems to be "singing" is on tracks like Jealousy and Screwed, completely Paris-proof tracks, where the vapid heiress can do next to nothing to mess things up. The rest of the time, she's content to just speak most of the lyrics, treading that safe space where she doesn't really have to put any actual lungpower into her singing. That comes as quite a relief through most of the album, considering the disastrous attempts she makes at a husky, seductive whisper on the first song and at full-throated singing on the last one.

Paris Hilton

And yet, one has to admit that this album isn't really the worst thing to hit the stands this year. Credit for that, although Paris proudly claims to have co-wrote most of the songs on this album, has to go the best production team that money can buy. Thus, you have songs like "Fight Over Me", where Paris simply fills the small gaps between verses featuring Fat Joe and Jadakiss. And on almost every other song on the album, a crack team of technicians, led by producer Scott Storch, push Paris's less-than-good voice to the sidelines, letting a compilation of some of the biggest trends in pop and dance music do the talking instead.

This isn't a good album by any means. But it is an interesting one in that it shows just what the rest of the mainstream pop industry has been reduced to.

After all, if Paris can manage this much of an output through simply a great production team, it says a lot for the others in the industry who have so much more working in their favour.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail