There is a lot of buzz these days about the romantic film Kites, directed by Anurag Basu. It has a unique story line where the two lead characters do not speak each other’s language. Adding to the hype was the casting of handsome Hrithik opposite Spanish beauty Barbara Mori in her debut film. Expectations are high and everyone was clamoring for the music. Producer Rakesh Roshan once again went with brother Rajesh for the music direction. I have not been a big fan of Rajesh Roshan’s work so I was a bit worried, but hoped I would be surprised with some very good songs. Did he provide them? Well… no. Read on to see what I mean.
Zindagi Do Pal Ki is Western in tune and feeling with a bit of an Indian flavor thrown into the music. KK sounds wonderful as usual, but for some reason I did not feel his phrasing and tone matched the music. He was too smooth, which usually is a compliment; in this case it is not. Further into the song, the music becomes quite an amalgamation of instruments and styles and, while it is composed well, it seems to be too much of everything. I could also say it is missing a deeper level. I am not sure which would fix it; it just does not quite all fit together. Favorite part was the end, where he just combined a simple musical line and KK’s wonderful voice. I like the track despite its problems and think it will be a lovely background song to a montage – we’ll see!
The remix is completely different and has a nice peppy beat to the added synth mix. KK’s smooth vocalization fits this a bit better, which you would not think would be the case. I even liked the addition of the female voice and the lyrics she spoke. This one is worth a listen to, and maybe more than the original.
The instrumental in the beginning of Dil Kyu Ye Mera has a very wistful feel, which is lovely whenever that melody line is sung. KK is again at the mike and has a very velvety, almost whispery, vocal delivery. Somehow though, this did not sound right or even good; it felt very affected and artificial. Again with this track there is too much in the music and it all sort of fights each other and the vocal instead of blending. I never could enjoy the music or KK’s voice. When it goes from a full violin orchestration to a full-on rock number for just a few bars and then back to the original melody line you wonder why those small sections even needed to be there. It has a lot going on, but no depth or direction. Throughout the song you can feel a bit of the Spanish essence that is part of the story in the acoustic guitar line, which I did like. This one may play better on screen. My favorite part once again was just the simple notes of KK’s voice and the music stripped down. Save this one for the film.
As you probably know, I am not a big fan of remixes and I really wondered why they would remix this one. I don’t know, but they did. It did not work as a song and maybe they thought with the synth beats and lines they could fix it. They didn’t. The new rap-ish/r&b added vocal line was okay, but it felt forced and certainly did not mix with KK’s delivery of the lyrics. Skip this one, too.
Tum Bhi Ho Wohi stays on the Western popish beat that seems to be the theme of the album. Vishal Dadlani and Suraj Jagan do the honors on the vocals. Once again the singer’s line does not match the music and this one is the worst of the lot. I am not saying that the vocals are bad, they are quite good, the harmony especially, but again it has this overall wispy-trebly quality that got old, and in parts was totally opposite to the music. I love Suraj Jagan’s strong rock wail, but it was wasted because it felt out of place in this song. The music develops a weird modern synth mess of an instrumentation that is hard to listen to. I turned down the cacophony, and I hate doing that. Songs should make you want to turn it up to 11, not 1 or off!
The remix was a bit less of a mess, especially the beginning, with the nice harmonies mixing with a rather standard beat. Is it anything special? No, but better than the original on the ears? Yes!
We have been hearing for over a year that Hrithik had sung a song on the soundtrack for Kites, but no one really was sure if that indeed did happen. Well, yes it is true and you know what, he is not bad on Kites in the Sky. Is he KK or Sonu or Udit Narayan? Nooo, but he does croon quite nicely. His diction on the lyrics is very good and he has a nice tone. You know it is the love ballad since it is a duet with Suzanne D’Mello and she is singing in Spanish as the voice of Barbara/Natasha while Hrithik, interestingly, is singing in English, not Hindi, as Jai. I love the English lyrics that Hrithik sings. Suzanne is fabulous on the track (what is it with the whispery vocal again?)…however, I love her voice. The music is very full in sound with a beautiful melody line. There is wonderful orchestration and musically this is a highlight of the album. I cannot wait to see what is happening in the film. I was surprised and quite enjoyed melting while imagining him singing this on screen. You must listen to this one, even if you don’t love Hrithik’s voice. I give it a thumb up!
From the beginning few beats, you know that Fire is the track that we will get to see Hrithik do one of the things he does best…dance. The music has a very cool groove with a lot of interesting synth sounds mixed to perfection. It did remind me of ‘Dhoom Machale’ in some of the drum beats, but that is probably because I have watched that number over and over again. Loved the ‘Fire’ refrain…it fit perfectly with the music in intonation and power. I even liked the mix of the Hindi and English lyrics, and all the vocals by Rajesh Roshan, Vishal Dadlani, Anirudh Bhola, and Anushka Manchanda were fab. In fact, it was not long enough and I wanted the song to go on longer. Overall, you can call this a cool dance track that makes you want to see what the choreographer dreams up to go with the music.
There is also an English version of Fire, and why they needed to include this, I am not sure. It did feel a little more synth club mixy, but only a bit. Odd that they felt they needed to have another version…maybe I missed something. Still it’s a good song, so I did not mind trying to dance… I mean listen to it, again.
Once again I found that Rajesh Roshan tries to put too much into his songs and somehow misses adding the right instruments to create a depth of sound. He also needs to rethink how he mixes his vocal lines and his music…he has yet to conquer that aspect of composing. The parts separately are goodish, especially the vocals, but he needs something more (or is it less?) in his music. For now, check out ‘Fire’, ‘Kites in the Sky’ and ‘Zindagi Do Pal Ki’ and hopefully the rest will play better on screen.
