Kabali Audio Review

Movie: Kabali (కబాలి)
Producer(s): Kalaipulu S Thanu
Cast: Rajanikanth, Radhika Apte, Dhansika, Dinesh Ravi, Kalaiyarasan, John Vijay star
Direction: Pa Ranjith

Music: Santosh Narayanan

After last two movies being flopped at box office, Kochodaiyaan and Lingaa Rajanikanth is coming with a gangster drama film after a gap of two years. The teaser was a rage and reminded him of the movie that was released 21 years ago. When Rajinikanth comes with a movie, his fans all expect him to be seeing him on screen. Then they will think of the movie whether its good or bad to watch it again. Thats the strength of his following. 

Rajinikanth's movies are always made special in terms of music. Any music director who worked with him always have given their best. After leaving out Ilayaraja, Rajanikanth sticked with ARR for long time, before letting him also go to work with a different music director. This would be the first movie that he is not working with ARR ever since he started with him.

Santosh Narayanan after debuting in Tamil film industry he is gaining his own space gradually increasing the number of movies he is doing every year and many notable films year after year. This year its a jackpot for him that he is working with none other than Superstar. The teaser got a very good name for him and lets see whether he continued his trend in Telugu too. Since its a dubbed movie, this will not be a critical factor for him as his music will be judged based on Tamil songs not Telugu. Lets go into details of each song.

Song: Okadae Okadokkadae
Singers: Ananthu & Chorus
Lyrics: Anantha Shriram

Ananthu sounded like Shankar Mahadevan at some places and like Kailesh Kher at few other places. This song doesn't appear like Telugu song at many places. There was no effort made for dubbing the song. The Rap in English is the only thing that sounds better in this song. Ananth Sriram's words in lyrics are shrinked to  fit the tune like vastunnaadu has become vastundu, kadilinaadu,becomes kadilindu. if the rest of the song goes in this slang, then its fine, but they dont. So the issue. Then other issue is with singers who made this song look bad. They can easily adjust if words are little bit out of sync, but they did not. The music director being non-Telugu probably cared much about his tune than the words and how they are synchronized with the tune. The tune as such doesn't have any issues, but over all song doesn't appeal.

Song: Gunde Ninda Yenno
Singers: Ananthu, Pradeep Kumar, Swetha Mohan
Lyrics: Anantha Shriram

This song starts good, but again the singers mess it up. మనల్ని ఇలా was the actual lyric, but it was said as మనల్ నిలా  which appears as Tamil word. So there by lost the nativity and appears as if Lyricist didn't find words to fill the tune in translation had to use Tamil word. This song is well made, with nice guitar beats, good melody, but again singers falter. The soul misses in the song. The feel is missing. and then alien to Telugu sound. Ananth Sriram's lyrics and Santhosh Narayanan's tune is felt wasted. Proably a little bit care would have made this song instant hit. 

Song: Ugra Trinetruda
Singers: Ganesh Ram
Lyrics: Ramajogaiah Sasthri

This song except for composer, everything has gone wrong. Ugra Trinetrudaa, sivamettara Harom Haraa.. Then the problem starts. Once again singers mess it up big time. Since eighties untouchable is definitely aimed at Rajini, even if it doesn't  correlated to story it would be fine. Rap is much better in this song again compared to main portion of the song. Did I hear " Attudukatha satruvu talagada"?? I heard the rest ok, like "nuvvu machitananiki manugaDa. digi vachina devuDaa, inta kaalam nuvvekkada". Wow. probably sastry garu was out of words to fit the tune that he had to use the phrase satruvu talagada to find a rhyming pattern for "Da". Anyways the singer had no feel, no expression nothing just goes reading the words in some lesser rap style. The interludes are out of sync with stanzas. Probably one messed up song. 

Song: Kalavani O Nadhi
Singer: Pradeep Kumar
Lyrics: Vanamali

The feel is the soul of the song, which lacks in this song. Singer again falters big time. He sounded like reading with tune instead of singing with expression. The tune will appeal but not the singing. The lyrics are again some how broken into pieces there by loosing the connectivity. Aakasam lo megham sounded a lot different. Raaye kariginade, sounds like calling instead of stone due to singer. Again one more song that sounds bad in Telugu. 

Song: Nippu Ra
Rap and Lyricas Verses: Vanamali
Dialogues/adlib verses: Shri Rajinikanth

This song when released as the teaser was huge rage. Tamil song was perfect. Santosh Narayanan was praised a lot for coming up with such an electrifying music, and every Rajani fan was happy. This tune has lot to offer and so is the song. The fans were awestruck looking at the visuals and few dialogs and the whistle in the end of the song.. With this background, the expectations on the song were nothing less than far beyond sky. 

The Telugu version is no difference until the phrase "Nippu Raa" and the music that follows. The entire trouble starts from the first stanza, Everything went wrong after that. The singer was bad, the lyrics were bad in the sense that they didnt match the tune, the singer lacked the energy, it appeared he wanted to be loud enough so that the rage in the eyes of Rajini will be seen but unfortunately its not that way. Vanamali once again failed in this song too. On the top All the words were totally misfit, the singer hurrying it up saying the words as if he had to go somewhere, was total disaster. And then add to pronunciation issues. Probably it will take another article to write what went wrong with this song. This will become a benchmark, how a Tamil song cannot be dubbed. 

Its a sentiment that SPB sings the title song of the movie, then the movie is expected to be sure shot hit. Fans will now have to wait until the movie to see whether this sentiment would fail this time, even though the song failed big time in Telugu.

Song(s) of the album: Better Skip Telugu version and Listen to Tamil version. Even if we dont understand, we can enjoy the music/hard work by Santosh Narayanan.

Even after the failure of Telugu version of Maniratnam's film Kadali where Vanamali was single card lyricists, Filmy people didnt realize the issue. This is a huge issue that needs to be fixed else the songs of dubbed movies doesn't make sense. By all means this audio is huge disappointment in Telugu version. There is no nativity feeling in these songs, there is no feel that Tamil songs had offered, lyrics are huge mismatch, singers serve no purpose. If anyone knows Tamil, its all better to skip the Telugu version and ignore this album.