Billa 2 (Yuvan Shankar Raja) : A Music Review

Here is my first attempt at penning a music review for a movie album. I do not have any pretensions whatsoever about my supposed “knowledge” over musical matters. These are just the musingly felt reflections of an aam-film music listener;)  


Billa 2 (Yuvan Shankar Raja) : A Music Review


With the "Billa-2 Theme" , Yuvan manages to create a HansZimmer-like-sounding heavy duty version of the Billa theme. The solo trumpet at the beginning and the violins make it sound particularly sinister; with the whistle at the end being stylishly cool.


“Idhayam Intha Idhayam” sung beautifully by Shweta Pandit, begins with an almost Rahmanish piano, soon slipping into an instantly likeable tune punctuated by tablas and a whole bunch of classical instruments. The tune does betray a “heard-somewhere-but-can’t-remember-where” feel. Disappointingly, the lyrics largely turn out to be rather staid !


If “Yedho Mayakkam” is intended to be a groovy club number, it certainly scores at that. The nadaswaram-guitar combo at the beginning is instantly catchy, followed by some lovely Rihanna-esque singing by Tanvi Shah !! It goes horrible when Yuvan pushes the song into his staple techno-trance rhythms, especially annoying is that typical electronic blurp sound straight from STR’s “Evan di onna peththaan” from Vaanam !! The “Bounce-bounce” part also sounds uninspiringly kinder-gartenish. Overall, the song should look better on screen with Thala dancing to this one !!


More Vaanam-style techno rhythms and electronic blurps follow in “Gangster”. Neither does the tune offer much salvation, oscillating between sounding as a church-choir and a kindergarten rhyme. The English lyrics sound particularly bad – “Gang, Gang, Gangster, Here comes the monster, You will surrender” !! ??@#^#


“Unakkulle Mirugam” has some inspired singing by Ranjith over a proper sounding rock base and reveals some good, high-sounding lyric writing ! The theme music interludes stand out amidst some particularly expressive guitar and drums. Though this track might take time to catch the attention of the popularity charts , it looks almost certain to turn out super-heavy on screen !!


“Madurai Ponnu” is the crowd favourite item song that is sure to receive anthemic reverence from the front rows ! A funnily-sounding treatment of the Arabian interludes, some heady singing by Andrea over the tavil rhythm and some brilliant orchestration by Yuvan makes a hard-to-avoid cocktail !!


Overall, though belonging to the clichéd “mixed bag”, Billa 2 certainly represents a welcome break from the mediocre stuff that Yuvan has been churning out in recent times. Ajith’s persona is only going to add visually to the songs once they hit the screens. Though Yuvan manages to pull out a commercial success, one can’t help wonder if he misses another chance to hit the next level.  

Am Sorry.. I didnt ask your name ..

Enterpreneurs - huh.. that was a tough one to spell.. wonder how the 13 year olds manage to spell "Laodicean" to win spelling competitions.. never mind if you are staring at this strange creature of a word for the first time. Most of us can sympathise with you.. atleast lets feel proud (the TV channels endlessly profess us to do so) that its Indian kids who most often end up winning these competitions.. :) (Btw,Laodicean means being indifferent or lukewarm especially in matters of religion)
Coming back to less intimidating 'Enterpreneur' , though we dont necessarily find this word-with-too-many-Es too likeable, it does immediately remind us of images of Ambanis and Tatas and so many other suit clad gentlemen .. (though they arent necessairly enterpreneurs.. their Dads and in many cases, GrandDads were.. )
A recent overnight bus trip gave me the oppurtunity to meet up with two young guys.. must have been 13 year olds.. (ofcourse, not the US-Born-Indian-Spell-Kids). The highways in TN are dotted with small 24*7 dhabas (though not quite called so in the southern part of the country), where the bus and lorry drivers manage to shrug off their sleep.. thanks to the Great Indian Beverage - TEA;).

What these two guys do is very simple yet so amazing. They carry a small clutch of old newspapers and a plastic bottle filled with soap water. Whenever a bus grinds to a halt at the dhaba, these guys go, climb over the front of the bus, spray the soap water through a small hole pierced on the bottle cap and clean the front glass(not sure what it is technically called)with the old papers. Nobody has employed them to do this nor have the bus drivers asked them to do it.

For every bus that they wipe the glass for, they get 2 Rs. from the bus conductor; and share the spoils equally. One of them tell me they attend to about a hundred buses a night. Thats 100 Rs for each one of them per day, Rs.3000 per month; not bad at all, isnt it?? It takes a lot to put human spirit and creativity on chains.

Enterpreneurs -it does immediately remind me of images of Ambanis, Tatas, so many other suit clad gentlemen, and.. these two 13 year olds in Ulunderpettai !!.

On the bus ,while I couldnt stop marvelling at their enterprise and spirit, I couldnt also escape how hypocritical I had been.. Having asked them so many questions about their work, having worked out all these calculations, and even managing to pull out my camera to click a few snaps of them, ... I didnt care to ask their names !@#??

Next time my bus winds off the highway to this dhaba in Ulundurpettai, I will remember to ask the names of these little Mr.Enterpreneurs.