Remixes aren’t music to the ears
Tracks such as ‘Aankh Marey’ and ‘Tere Bin’ are being revisited for new movies
Oh God, one more remix?” Karan Johar rightfully asks in the reboot of the song
Aankh Marey in Simmba. Bollywood musicians are increasingly looking back at old tracks, adding a sprinkle of dance music and serving them to Bollywood buffs — much to some people’s joy and to others’ dismay.
The onset of 2019 has brought along one song recreation after another. Tere Bin, Chamma Chamma, Paisa Yeh Paisa and the latest Mungda, which was launched on February 5.
Singer Subhro J Ganguly, who has forayed into Bollywood with Paisa Yeh Paisa and Mungda from the upcoming film Total Dhamaal, says recreations are like tributes to legendary composers.
“The 1970s and 1980s music was so legendary that our new generation is rediscovering it in their own way and recreating it. The current generation is dancing to those tunes and paying tribute to those legendary composers and singers, who had done those wonderful compositions. I think it is more of a tribute to them,” Ganguly said from Mumbai.
Actor Arshad Warsi, who featured in the remixed version of his own song Aankh Marey from the 1996 film Tere
Mere Sapne, finds the viral
trend fun.
“I personally feel there is no harm in recreating songs. I did Aankh Marey in 1996 or 1997... The whole generation did not know about the song, but today everyone knows it because they all went back and Googled it... It’s fine, and something that is nice for people to go back and see, and the new generation seeing it too,” Warsi said.
Arpita Chakraborty, one of the singers of the new version of the hit disco song Paisa
Yeh Paisa, said: “I feel that it is the best way to revive and relive the melodies that were created by yesteryear’s music directors, to make them more accessible and presentable to our youth. I absolutely love remakes.”
Singer Arjun Kanungo, whose single La La La was recreated for actor Saif Ali Khan’s film Bazaar, said he is tired of remixes.
“I am tired of recreations now and focus more on original music because of the simple reason that in the future, say 10 years down the line, the record labels won’t have anything to recreate. If you keep recreating a song again and again and make no new content, then you are really not thinking about the future very much,” he said. —