सौरभ राय | Sourav Roy

Kolaveri means hatred, a rage to kill. This is a simple and funny heartbreak song. A song that sounds stupid at first, and then slowly, grows. The makers of the Tamil film ‘3’ have hit the right chord. They have tapped the Internet. The nature of social networks and the propensity to share things that people find interesting gives the song a wider audience.

‘Kolaveri’ has been trending on Twitter and Facebook faster than any Indian song ever has. Secondly, the studio ambiance clicks! This Kolaveri video has that same raw feel to it that any unplugged recording has, which allows the viewer to connect with it more easily than the fantasy that a song-and-dance film song creates. The process, and not the product is shown.

Finally and most importantly, the lyrics of the song has it own unique texture. The lyrics is very easy to remember (even for non Tamilian), this may be one of the reasons behind its immense success. Many people have started putting up lyrics of this song as their status messages on social networking sites. It’s a song fit for bathroom singers. The beats are simple and catchy. The theme is so common yet untapped. Heartbreak is a phenomenon almost everyone can relate to, which has further fuelled the popularity of the song.

Going deeper into the roots of the song, the song belongs to a new genre of music. You may call this genre as black. Unlike blues, these songs depict rage, instead of sorrow. Songs of Delhi Belly in particular, belonged to this new genre. The first stanza (interestingly) repeatedly uses the term- black. The second stanza too brings in the metaphor with the analogy of a girl’s white skin and her black heart, where a skin is never white and a heart can never be black. The song ends in a very distressed note ‘this song for soup boys-u, we dont have choice-u’. This shows the helplessness of boys who are in love.

Well, this a song that somewhere strikes multiple right chords at the same time. Not just in the marketing, but also in terms of music and underlying philosophy, this song is yet another masterpiece from the land of Ilayaraja, Mahadevan, Balasubrahmanyam and Rehman.