JOIN USHow playback singers transcend generations
The plus point of the recent 'Coolie No 1', which most viewers term as an exercise in futility, is the vital realisation from the re-creation of the 1995 hit songs 'Main to raste se jaa rahaa tha' (as 'Tujhko mirchi lagi') and 'Husn hai suhana' with the original playback voices retained.
These two songs clearly indicate that Kumar Sanu and Abhijeet, the respective singers, fit current heartthrob Varun Dhawan as well as they did Govinda 25 years ago.
And the same holds true for the respective female singers Alka Yagnik and Chandana Dixit as the playback voices here of Sara Ali Khan now, as against Karisma Kapoor in the original 'Coolie No 1' on which this movie is based.
As luck would have it, another original number 'Mummy kasam' has Udit Narayan singing for Varun with equal resonance. And we realise that all these voices that ruled the 1990s and early millennium are so perfect as voices even for the GenY and GenZ stars. Interestingly, all of them began in the 1980s.
This phenomenon is not different from the olden days when Lata Mangeshkar (born 1929 and introduced in 1947) fitted every heroine until the early millennium when she herself cut down on her film work. Here was a voice that suited to perfection ‘40s names Nargis and Madhubala, was the chosen singer from the ‘50s to the ‘70s, and was the voice of choice for debut-making heroines from Dimple Kapadia in Bobby to Preity Zinta in 'Dil Se'. The youngest heroine for whom she sang was Kareena Kapoor Khan in 'Bewafaa' in 2005.
Asha Bhosle, whose career began in 1948, has fitted Amisha Patel ('Kaho Naa…Pyaar Hai'), Gracy Singh ('Lagaan'), Shamita Shetty ('Saathiya, Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai'), Mallika Sherawat ('Aap Ka Surroor', 'Khwaish') and also Vidya Balan ('Begum Jaan'). Vidya, the oldest among them, was born when Asha was 46.
Mohammed Rafi, whose career began in 1944, sat pat on Mithun Chakraborty, Raj Babbar and Deepak Parashar, whose entry points were between 1978 and 1980, the year he passed away. A song taped for another hero for a shelved film was transferred in 1989 to the producer’s new film with Govinda in 1989, 'Farz Ki Jung', and did not sound incongruous on his lips at all!
Kishore Kumar similarly sang for Govinda, Chunky Pandey, Sunny Deol, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Kumar Gaurav, Rajiv Kapoor, Raj Babbar and Sanjay Dutt, all ‘80s products along with South imports Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth, despite starting out in 1948 as the voice of Dev Anand in Ziddi.
And that is the essence of a true-blue playback singer, who modulates his voice and style as per the needs of a song — its mood, genre, actor and the times. At the same time, as we all know, Rafi was singing playback for Dilip Kumar, Shammi Kapoor, Dev Anand and Johnny Walker.
The true playback singer is almost extinct today, at least in the way he or she is professionally utilised. Today’s trend of using songs as items with labels sufi, hiphop, rock, Punjabi pop et al shows that vocal brands that have replaced trained singers who fit the face on the screen.
Kishore Kumar’s son Amit Kumar is a case in point. His voice was almost dubbed by another singer in his last cult hit 'Dil mein baji guitar' ('Apna Sapna Money Money' in 2006) that he sang for Riteish Deshmukh and Shreyas Talpade. Producer Subhash Ghai insisted that his voice be retained.
A year later, he sang for Arshad Warsi and Javed Jaffrey in 'Dhamaal'. This voice from the 1970s, however, was not so lucky when composer Amit Trivedi recorded with him, and at a director’s behest, his voice was over-dubbed from two popular songs with today’s “sensation” Arijit Singh.
“Can you imagine Arijit’s voice fitting even Tiger Shroff or Arjun Kapoor?” asks a composer who will remain unnamed. “Today, anyone is called for any artiste. Don’t you remember Bappi Lahiri singing 'Ek lo ek muft' for the baritone Abhishek Bachchan? A playback singer must fit many stars — older, his age or younger!”
Kumar Sanu and Sadhana Sargam for Ayushmann Khurrana and Bhumi Pednekar in 'Dum Laga Ke Haisha' ('Dard karaara'), Abhijeet for Ranbir Kapoor in 'Besharam' ('Dil ka jo haal hai'), Kavita Krishnamurthi Subramaniam for Vidya Balan in 'Tumhari Sulu' ('Hawa hawaai' re-created), Alka Yagnik for Alia Bhatt in 'Highway' ('Sooha saaha') are all terrific examples of how properly-groomed playback voices suit far younger actors.
Unlike crooners or fleeting sensations, a hardcore playback singer can elevate a song and impart perfect emotional nuances and expressions into it. Miraculously in such cases, a slight discrepancy in voice-fit always becomes inconsequential, like Shabbir Kumar’s 'I don’t know what to do' in 'Housefull'.
When will the music makers of today heed this vital truth?