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Listening to one’s entire song collection in shuffle mode has many advantages — for one, it enables me to remain lazy. More importantly though, I love the feeling of anticipating the next song — அடுத்த வினாடி ஒளித்து வைத்திருக்கும் ஆச்சர்யங்கள்! Today, two songs that the music player served up one after another caught my attention. In an earlier life, one of my favorite lines of thought was how, as time flies by, we have regressed as a society. While I do not intend this post as a social commentary, I cannot help wondering if that is indeed true.

The first song was an old classic, Chithiram Pesudhadi from the 1958 Sivaji Ganesan movie Sabaash Meena. I love the simple construction of the song, the unobtrusive music, and the civil choice of words to express passionate longing. Sample the first two stanzas:

சித்திரம் பேசுதடி; எந்தன் சிந்தை மயங்குதடி
முத்துச் சரங்களைப் போல் மோகன புன்னகை மின்னுதடி

தாவும் கோடி மேலே ஒளிர் தங்கக்குடம் போலே
பாவை உன் பேரெழிலே எந்தன் ஆவலைத் தூண்டுதடி

The last line is a personal favorite because of its subtlety. It probably would have just been ordinary in another age, when subtlety was a given in popular culture. But somewhere along the way, I think we lost that sense, and as a populace, decided that crude — even senseless — lyrics were OK, so long as it gels with the tune.

For long, creators have blamed this on the audience. Their comfortable excuse is that “this” is what their audience craves for. And that is plain stupidity. As Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘Give us faster horses!’“. It is therefore the creator’s burden to uplift society’s appreciation. However, popular culture is a volume game, and so, pecuniary considerations demand that society be dumbed down.

For which reason, while I enjoyed the song that followed (Kalloori Saalai, from the movie Kaadhal Desam) , I will never be able to reconcile how Vaali — one of my favorite lyricists — penned the lines:

கண்கள் silicon graphics
Girls வந்தாலே jam ஆகும் traffic
V-channel choice உன் Dolby voice
Lightning கன்னங்கள் LASER
நம்ம love matter சொல்லாது pager
நான் காதல் computer நீதானே software