Super Singer - Singers of the future

Nirjahari vs Madhumitha

Madhumitha's kaNNa mana nilayai thangame thangam (from deivaththin deivam). My God! What a tough song. Sangathis are almost flawless, couple of slips otherwise it is excellent. My favorite along the lines of Sarath and Mahitha's performance. kanda naaL mudhala kaadhal perugathadi by Nirjhari. Beautiful song, nicely rendered, but not outstanding.

Prabhu vs Vishwanath

Beautiful song selection again. Poo maalai vaangivanthEn and aadal kalaiyE dEvan thandhathu. Prabhu has got nice baritone voice and brought out the mood very well, yet the flow of rendition could have been more continuous, felt little choppy, but the expres​sion(bhaavam) was very nice, nevertheless nicely sang. Vishwanath having lot of classical background, shows up, but a song is not all about notes, the expression inside it.

Ramanathan Vs Deepthi

Maadhavi pon mayilaaL and paadariyEn padippariyEn. Ramanathan has got a unique and mature voice for his age. He almost sang to perfection while Deepthi picked the toughest song especially towards the end, the climb is so steep, she managed very well. Bravo! Another two talents to look forward to.

Not a fan of this programme but watch it mainly to: 1. Gauge the popularity of a song 2. Amateur renditions of Raaja songs often remind me of the awesomeness of the original 3. Raaja-anecdotes by the judges. 4. There is nothing better to watch on thamizh channels.

Agree with V_Sji that this time the quality is remarkably better than the previous seasons. The classical round was gold, they chose some rara Raaja songs too.

Btw really liked the initial auditions, no, not because of the singing/judging etc, but for the stats. Pleasantly surprised that > 50% of the song choices were Raaja's. I mean illaatti mudiyumaa.. Saw 2-3 people sing NEP songs too. But the most popular song (perhaps easy to sing too, which is another reason they chose it) was Ayyayyo Aanandhame.

Surprised to see that the quality is going up!

Well, some day they'll reach the Asianet levels...
Reg ooru vittu ooru vandhu v/s aNNAththa AduRar - ayyO paridhAbam, simply no comparison. The karagam guy was outstanding
small nitpick - Why did Nithyashree mention 'vEdham nee' as KJY "composition"?
Is there some poruththnai that she should not pronounce rAsA's name?
BTW, like Nerd mentioned, watching these videos makes one appreciate rAsA songs better. Especially the semi-classical ones - real toughies! (Actually tougher than even those from the TMS-SeerkAzhi era it appears).
I guess choosing to sing 'pAdaRiyEn' could be quite suicidal KSC's rendering is too fresh in most people's mind and it needs extraordinary skills to finish off cleanly
BTW, the vEdham (salangai oli) was done really nice! (OTOH, I'm unimpressed with the 'vEdham nee iniya nAdham nee' fellow...pAvam. Even the percussionist failed in the second saraNam beginning by bringing down the pace, picked up only in the later part)

Good observations app ji! Still a long way to go for them. Regarding vEdham nee I also immediately asked the same question. Might be tongue slip.
In folk round, most of them chose kuththu song, thinking folk mean kuththu. Just now we heard shenbagamE shenbagamE. Like that there are tons of folk melodies from IR which no one picked.

Thursday's (03/21/2013) episode. Diwakar singing avaL oru navarasa naadagam.

konjam Overa thaan pOraanga. I didn't like this round at all. First day unplugged round was horrible, they literally killed all Raja songs. Even that is acceptable, now they were asked to do more than singing (I am not talking about the morning work out), which sets up a very bad precedent. Even if it is for fun (exchanging garlands, swimming while singing et al), it is unacceptable. Is for this reason parents send their kids for singing in a competition? Vijay TV/Super Singer 4/Judges are taking advantage of the contestants, I strongly condemn this round and their activities. Makaps ugly jokes. It can't get lower than this

Some of the performances I liked in the free style round.

Soniya - Mallu girl. She is brilliant so far. Contestant to look forward to.


Parvathi - She is brilliant too and she competed in Super Singer Junior too.


Narayanan - He tried his best.


Viswanath - He sang brilliantly. Somehow Sowmya was stone-hearted to give green (as this fellow accidentally commented in earlier round that he used to sing well, but he didn't do well, which irked Sowmya, as it seems he is not supposed to tell that he used to sing well - humility mafias - they don't know where they stand).


Madhumitha - She is a good singer, another one to look forward to.

Here comes the judges fatal error.

Shravan - He chose a tough song and I thought he sang well, but got eliminated from Super Singer 4.


Aravind - This guy was mediocre and got all green lights and through to the next round.


Please decide yourselves.

For 1-2 seasons now, Super Singer's become intolerable - their 'search' for 'performers' rather than singers is the most annoying/worrisome part - the focus is more on dancing/smiling/glamour etc - I have seen 'Anantji' indicating to some singers while singing to 'smile more' - why?? why should the singer smile? If the song is a happy/cheerful song, then the listeners should smile automatically listening to your singing - why do you have to give us cues? And why should a singer dance - and Srini's comments - thaanga mudiyaadhu -everytime someone sings an IR song, he cleverly diverts attention from praising IR or the composition, his list of tactics (IMO):

1. good singing, I liked your improvisation in the middle, better than original => skipped commenting on the composition (also, slyly and subtlely implying that the original is not the *best* version)
2. good singing, but feel varala, 'feel' is more important than virtuosity (eg: Soundarya's Isayil Thodanguthamma) => again relevant/needed comments skipped
3. Singing not up to the mark, you have had better days (instead of saying you chose a tough composition, YEnna that will mean he has to comment on the song la  )
4. Random questions to Anantji immediately after singing is over - Sir, is his voice always like this, I think it is breaking (Sai Saran is his name I think, the kid)
5. Generic comments on the performance without getting into specifics (avarukke theriyaadhu nu I guess  ), and more importantly, 'this is my advise to all singers' athu ithu nu pEsi mudichuruvaaru

Sujatha and to a lesser extent, Unni also indulge in such tactics, but I get the feeling that Srini is the one who is actively trying to 'erase' IR in that show.

Also, has there ever been an Ilaiyaraaja round in SS, I forget. I believe there was an ARR round some seasons back - Ilaiyaraaja round vecha atha mattum paathuttu I will skip the rest!

vicks wrote:Sujatha and to a lesser extent, Unni also indulge in such tactics, but I get the feeling that Srini is the one who is actively trying to 'erase' IR in that show.
 

All four fellows (3 judge kaLLa gumbal & the anchor lady) talked about SL for AttamA (marichchu pOyi + Keralite affinity, ellAm OK) but not a single word about rAsA!

The agenda is very clear!

nadakkattum, nadakkattum - but unfortunately for them, they can't live without rAsA songs

Even while Bharathbala says 'all my friend songs', the very first one was 'ennOda rAsi nalla rAsi'

Unfortunately, Dhanush could not show his IR fandom (understandably because of mariyAn promotion) but avanga mAmanAr paththi oru vArththai solli irukkalAm...

Nice post vicks. Yes Soundarya got some bad comments having performed that complex song well. That youngest singer is Sai Vignesh. They are planning to route him based on his voice alone. Excellent singer for his age. They are making him a clown by asking him to dance. Don't worry, there will not be a ILaiyaraaja round, if at all there will be 80's round.

App ji, As I was telling (in twitter), they decided not to talk about Raja, fearing he will get a break, what a childish thought!. 

One good thing about Dhanush if you watched yesterday's show. He told what I have been telling about today's hits and popularity. Nowadays hit depends the CD sales on the first few days without even listening to the songs. That's exactly what Dhanush quoted yesterday about that film songs.

V_S wrote:App ji, As I was telling (in twitter), they decided not to talk about Raja, fearing he will get a break, what a childish thought!. 

 Sir, idhu enna matter?

App ji, ippo thaan I saw that '80s Music' Neeya Naana - didn't want to derail the flow of that thread, but Vadivelu solra maadhiri - EnnA Villathanam! Konja Konjamaa Vijay TV is one of the biggest anti-IR groups nu thOnudhu. first time I distinctly got that feeling was here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4BwTwbt8rw8&t=2092

I also added a comment there in that youtube page - if you notice around 35:06 - when Vijay Prakash starts praising IR, DD abruptly cuts him off with 'Suchi kitta kekkalaam' - now I don't think DD is personally a IR hater - I have seen her being moved to tears for Vaanam Thottu Pona group performance last season, and also seemed genuinely humble when asking IR something in Yuvan's Malaysia show, when Kamal made a guest appearance. This leads me to conclude that the gag order comes from someone higher up - someone in Vijay TV - probably the same person who issued that gag order to Kobinath for the Neeya Naana. 

It is pretty clear this person is an IR hater, or, involved in ARR's PR machinery (how many times do they keep mentioning and praising ARR in SS -and rigging the game with ARR singers as judges etc.), or most likely, both.

Nothing :)Just that they don't want to bring in his name and spread among youngsters, otherwise he might get undue popularity. They are purposefully keeping it down mentioning only singers.

yeah thats true  - my sister who is ~ 2 yrs younger to me (I am 25-26) is, as you can guess, an ARR fan. We almost always end up arguing about IR vs ARR, and recently, one of her comments made me conscious of another aspect of this SS - her comment was that in SS, most singers chose IR songs only for melody round, and that hardly anyone 'chose' IR songs for Western/Jazz round (with that abomination of a 'live band' ) - hence IR is good for melodies, but ARR is better all-rounder - and definitely the best choice for modern/western music.  

Eppadi ellam SS is influencing our Youth..