Hi all, Of late there has been a lot of talk on this forum and in media on the appropriateness of Jiyo Uthe as a theme song for the CWG games and how it does or does not stack up to a song like Shakira's Waka Waka or Ricky Martin's Cup of life. In this regard, I would like to make a few observations on what in my view are the reasons the song hasnt caught on so well as it should have:-
1) Where is the Video?? The popularity of any sports event theme song is directly dependant on the popularity of the video promoting it. What do u today remember about Shakira or Ricky Martin's song? Not the lyrics or the tune but definitely the videos for the songs. Forget about how good or bad the video is....in case of Jiyo Uthe I dont even know whether such a video exists or if so, when it would be getting released. In stark contrast, compare this with the audio theme release ofARR's senmozhi which not only had an amazing score but more importantly, an outstanding video score by Gautham Menon. 2) Popularity of the Sport/Sportsmen - Both Ricky Martin and Shakira's songs related to a sport like Football which by its very nature is an extremely fast, famous and well known sport. Put in some fast paced music with ordinary lyrics and have a good video with the world cup starts - 9 out of 10 times, the song would be a hit. Whereas in this case, the CWG isnt what you can actually call a well known event. For that matter, how many of you even remember whether or not there were theme songs for the last three editions of the Asian Games/Olympics? Football is probably the easiest game to make a theme song on. For starters, it is just one game and secondly, the football starts are already famous and dont need any introduction. In this case, ARR is possibly the more famous than most of the participants of the CWG (at this point of time, most of the bigger stars have not even confirmed their participation) 3) Amateurish release - The only release of the theme song has been done so amateurishly that I really wonder how the same Organising committe can effectively run the games! And then the time of release - no where is a theme song released just one month before the games. I dont know how much this was due to ARR's busy schedules of late but still releasing the audio so near the games is a sure shot way to ensure it fails! 4) Choice of singer - I know I am treading on dangerous territory here but I would still have preferred ARR using a whole lot of singers and not just himself. This is in no way to cast aspersions on his singing ability (I belong to the tribe which thinks that when a song is touched by ARR's vocals, it becomes "blessed"). It is just that the whole feel would have been better. Again, I cannot help but compare the song to Senmozhi and how using a wide canvas of singers really elevated the song to a different league altogether. 5) Negativity - As singer Srinivas pointed out in an interview - The whole CWG media coverage has been very negative. I feel even if the best of the songs was released as the theme song, ppl would have found rereasons to think the song was bad. 6) Indian culture/international feel - I am really surprised that no where (or maybe in very few places) could I find any articles on what was the brief given to ARR for the theme song. On one hand, ppl want a song espousing the Indian culture while on the other hand they want a song like Waka Waka. Comeon guys - lets be clear on what we want. If a song like Waka Waka was required, the Organising Committee could have just spoken to Shakira and got her to retune the song!!! And the heights were ppl who had absolutely no knowledge of any musical sense commenting about how ARR's popularity or music is on the wane. The nadir here is that absolutely shocking article in the ibnlive.com site which listed out a lot of ARR's albums and said things were going downhill for him. Sorry for this long mail. I normally do not contribute much but I genuinely felt that there has been a excessive negative media hype on this whole issue which has actually accerberated the whole issue. Cheers, Balaji
