kanda nAL mudhal

Been listening to "kanda nAL mudhal" songs today, maybe 2-3 listenings of each song.
Now, what makes one like a song, whether its right after the first hearing or after a few runs? To me, it can be anything from depth, melody, novelty, punch, rhythm but most importantly moments of surprise, of which IR and ARR are masters. Yuvan Shankar Raja disappoints, especially after reading a lot of positive things being written in the blogosphere about its music. The saving grace is that you can't find the mandatory "kuthu" songs mandatory in Vidhyasagar's albums.
A word about the singers' pronunciations in YSR's albums. The hard 'L', 'N', 'zh' are strictly no-no. Add an anglo tinge to the rough edges that makes Thamizh unique and beautiful. YSR is damn strict with these rules and will brook no exception to these. However, its pleasantly surprising to hear more words being pronounced as they ought to be in this album than in any of his other albums.

The songs...

"mErkE mErkE" - Shankar Mahadevan & Sadhana Sargam(why?). This song is a melody. Even YSR couldn't get Shankar Mahadevan and even Sadhana(!) to get his pronunciation wrong. And BTW, the "lai lai" thing became passe after Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel (who's again being charged with possession of marijuana) sang "The Boxer"

"pani thuLi" - KK & Shreya Ghosal. Another melody, this one set to a hip-hop rhythm. Hip-hop seems to be YSR's obsession lately, nothing wrong in that though. This being a romantic song, KK & Shreya have modulated their voices very well.

"erimalai nAnE" - Shankar Mahadevan && Vasundhara Das. The pick of the album. Sounds like a situational song to me which can be appreciated better when watched in the movie. Contains shreds of sounds resembling a very diluted cross between a rhapsody and an opera, i should say.

"kanda nAL mudhalAi" - Subiksha & Pooja. Yet another drum-pad "fusion" song. Maybe we should blame IR for setting the bar so high its difficult for others to reach it. Maybe i'm just cribbing too much here. YSR didn't claim anything and its i who's assuming and expecting things. Dharmavathi on drums.

"koo koovena" - Mahalakshmi, Harish Raghavendra & Karthik. A fast-paced number. Doesn't stick to you. Nothing much to write home about. Another situational songs. In fact, remember seeing in a show that all the songs are theme-based and have a theme.

"Pushing It Hard" - Clinton & YSR. YSR got his chocolate finally. Here's another of his hip-hop which is more hip-hop than any of his hip-hop numbers (whew!). J-Lo kind of hip-hop to be precise. Wish he does a 50-cent or an Eminem type number one of these days. How many times can Thamizh be murdered? Here they are at it again. The song has English lyrics for good measure but even if it was English all the way, noone would have noticed. Maybe the picturization makes this song interesting to watch. I thought "Thee pidikka" from arindhum ariyAmalum was much better.

Hope the movie is better than the songs.