Composers’ tryst with penning lyrics

Composer MM Keeravani’s rant before the pre-release event of ‘Baahubali: The Conclusion’ has kicked a hornet’s nest. Not only it drew ire of current crop of lyricists but it also sparked a debate whether lyricists are being choked with composers penning their own songs.

Songs have been an integral part of the Telugu cinema, since its humble beginnings. Early age composers confined to scoring music, while it was the work of lyricists to pen the lines. Occasionally, a few composers tried their hand at penning lines, but the instances were very few and for in between.

Celebrated composer Adinarayana Rao, a screenwriter himself penned English lyrics for the song “Happy Happy Christmas” for the acclaimed film ‘Alluri Seetharamaraju’. The song was filmed on Jaggaiah’s Rutherford. While this was in the 70s in 80s, legendary singer SP Balasubrahmanyam (SPB) turned lyricist for director Jandhyala.

SPB, who also scored the music for ‘Padamati Sandhyaragam’, wrote a song “Life is shabby”, which was shot on ace percussionist Shivamani, who played a key role in the movie.

Come to 90s, composers writing songs have increased with Keeravani penning a few, mostly in the films directed by K Raghavendra Rao. The dawn of the new millennium and the foray of new age composers into industry changed the equations a bit.

The likes of Devi Sri Prasad, Chakri and others penned more than a handful of songs. With Devi, it has been a more or less a regular feature to write a song or two for the movie he is scoring music. He has to his credit chartbusters like “Pilla nuvvu leni jeevitam” in ‘Gabbar Singh’, “Aakasam tana rekkala to” in ‘Kalusukovalani’ and more. Meanwhile, Chakri to his credit has soothing melody, “Mona Mona Mona” from ‘Sivamani’.

Insiders in the movie industry say that the composers trying their hands at lyrics are more or less down to change in way songs are being scored. It is a common practice that composer, who comes up with a tune pens dummy lyrics and if the director and the hero like the dummy lyrics, they will be no longer dummy and the composer will have a card as a lyricist.

Back in the days, writers used to pen lyrics and composer used to tune them. Even though the trend changed by 70s, music directors like KV Mahadevan and others followed the old practice. The trend changed with composers coming up with tunes; directors began to insist on lyricists penning words to tunes, it wasn’t until new millennium that composers started writing lyrics more often.

With people increasingly favouring tunes rather than the lyrical depth, the tryst of a composer as a lyricist lasts only if the songs penned by him remain chartbusters.

By: Aditya Parankusam