Bought the album of Yamadonga, the Jr. NTR starer movie. This is the first (I guess) ever album released by Vel Records, a company owned by Music Director M. M. Keeravani. The album is typical Keeravani/S.S.Rajamouli combination album, trying to cover several types of songs with ample melody.
First let me talk about the packaging of the album. They gave a free “flip animation” booklet containing NTR on one side and Mohanbabu (as Yama) on the other side. That makes the packaging bulky. The quality of the booklet material is good, but the print quality and alignment (of multiple pages to give the animation feeling) is not that great. My kids flipped it once and threw it to the dash board of the car, where it may be charred in the heat for eternity. There are also a couple of stickers (again, NTR and Mohanbabu) and I am not sure if I ever take them out of the CD jacket again. Well, the Keeravani and Rajamouli combo doesn’t need tricks like these to sell their albums. They have a great track record already.
Here is my take on the songs:
- Rubberu Gaajulu: A fast beat duet with voices of Daler Mehandi and Pranavi. Typical Daler kind of song with decent music.
- Nunugu Meesalodu: Voices of Keeravani and Sunitha. The most melodious song of the album. I love this duet for its simple music and enchanting voices. If you are a melody lover, this will leave a mark on you.
- Nachore Nachore: Deepu and Ganga gave voices to this duet that is fast paced. Music reminds me of typical western-cowboy tunes.
- Nuvu Muttukunte: With Renjith and Pranavi’s voices, this is a bearable song, but not definitely among the best in the album.
- Young Yama: This is the song with biggest potential to make it to the top of charts, especially among the mass audience. Typical double meaning song you can expect from this music director and director combo, who deliver one song of this sort in every one of their movies (like Nuvu wistleste Andhra soda buddi in Simhadri.) Expect multiple female actors dancing for this song in the movie. The lyrics may confuse you with ambiguous voice rendering between politically correct words and their not-so-correct clones. You know what I mean. Lot of voices to the credit: Keeravani, Sankar Mahadevan, Mano and Pranavi.
All the above songs are penned by Anantha Sreeram.
Now let us visit the pleasant surprise of the album:
- Olammi Tikkareginda: Remember that song from classic Yamagola? This song starts with the same lyrics and tune. Instead of entirely depending on the same lyrics and tune, Keeravani blended the tune with his own variation during charanalu. I love this. The song drifts from the original and his own tune back and forth, creating a magic all over you, if you ever liked the original. I have a feeling that this song is a cross between Olammi Tikkareginda from Yamagola and Cheema song from Simhadri. The lyrics are by Jonnavittula. Voices are Mamatha Mohandas (great voice here) and, hold your breath, Jr. NTR. He did a splendid job on this song. His voice is smooth. BTW, the jacket of the album is printed with credits to Music Director Chakravarthi for the original tune. Good job by Keeravani for showing the due respect to his predecessor.
There are three more songlets/poems/whatever-you-call in the album, all penned by Jonnavittula. I think they may make more sense in the movie than for a pure audio experience.
Overall, this is a good album to buy and listen to.