Oh God! One More Remix?!

Those who have been following Bollywood for a long time will know by now that the industry goes through its fair share of highs and lows. After what is popularly referred to as the Golden Age of Hindi films from the 50s to the 70s, the industry descended into the depths of mediocrity in the 80s and 90s, with violence filled revenge dramas featuring half-baked plotlines that you couldn’t (or wouldn’t want to) remember half an hour after watching. One of the main attractions of Hindi films, however, has always been the music. A hit album, or sometimes, just one hit song is sometimes all that is needed for a film to stick to public memory by association regardless of the quality of the film itself and encourage footfalls into theatres. 

A combination of a well-written film with a hit album was the seeming pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for a film producer. This is why the Bollywood music industry, while being a satellite industry, grew into a force of its own, and could make or break the fortunes of a film at the ticket window. The importance of a film’s music was paramount prior to the boom of satellite television in India when word of mouth publicity and publicity through radio airplay was still king. When satellite television came along, the music of a film became even more of a selling point than before, as 24x7 music channels played music video clips from films every second minute to drive in film songs into the public consciousness. 

Fast-forward to today and the landscape of the film music industry is very different. What was once an industry set on the cornerstone of melody and recall value is now almost wholly focused on making a quick buck where possible through remakes or remixes of old songs. While money hungry film and music producers are not necessarily new in the film environment, the entire industry has seemingly moved away from quality music composition and writing to being a virtual McDonald’s of film music, outputting metaphorical musical junk food in the shape of remakes of older popular film songs. Of late, the number of remakes and remixes has exponentially grown. Almost every single film release has tried to cash in on the trend by adding a remake or two into its album, sometimes going so far as to have the entire album filled with remakes (for example, Street Dancer 3D). Things have reached a point now where the PR release about a film’s album will give details about the number of remakes but crow on about the number of ‘original compositions’, almost as if the default for film music is now remakes and original songs are a surprise bonus for listeners. 

The main ringleader behind this barrage of remixes is the huge music conglomerate T-Series. Decidedly the biggest label in the Indian music market and having the largest number of subscribers ever for a YouTube channel (137 million at last count), T-Series has, under the leadership of its head honcho Bhushan Kumar (son of Gulshan Kumar, the founder of T-Series), gone from an ordinary music label producing Hindi film soundtracks and Indipop to cornering the ‘fast music’ market. The company has also allegedly indulged in the sketchy practice of manipulating loopholes in copyright laws and this is why the market has been flooded with remakes and remixes. An example is the recent remake of the song ‘Masakali' (originally composed by AR Rehman) from Delhi 6, which AR Rehman distanced himself from publicly on Twitter, going so far as to encourage his followers to listen to the original ‘Masakali' instead (which was also backed up the director of Delhi 6, Rakesh Omprakash Mehra). While this may have counted as a ‘clapback’ of epic proportions, what this episode highlights is how little power music directors have over their own material and how much power music labels like T-Series have. It’s a known fact that music labels retain the legal rights to any music produced under their own label, but to proceed with the remaking of older songs in their catalogue without the permission of the original music directors speaks to a skew in copyright laws where the original composer of the music itself has very little legal claim to their own material.

The lack of fear of legal reprimand is perhaps what has spurred the market to be flooded with remixes. The idea is to cash in on the previously established popularity of songs and manipulate sentiment towards a particular song for acceptance of the remake. However, this seems to have backfired. Songs are now being remade/remixed more than ever and public opinion seems to be resentful towards these remakes, including the music directors of the original songs themselves. Social media reactions may exist in a vacuum but there seems to be a tiredness felt by the general public towards remakes and remixes of old hits. 

Not only is the loose legality of song remakes sketchy, remixing older hits as a default for any Hindi film album nowadays speaks to an inherent laziness in music composition. A song which has its music and lyrics already written prior would, one would imagine, need far less effort to be tweaked than to write and compose a new, original song from scratch. In terms of profit model, this is probably the best model of all; no rights need to be bought as the label most likely owns the original rights anyway, instrument players, lyricists don’t need to be engaged and the money saved on not engaging those crucial elements can be spent towards producing an overly glitzy music video. Very little attention is paid to the quality of the remix itself. What has become a pattern as of late with remixes is to slap a hip hop beat over the original music and add a desultory bit of English rap into the original lyrics to make the remix song ‘different’. This lack of effort is a reflection of how little music labels care nowadays about public acclaim than about short term profitability.  

This discussion cannot be complete without discussing the massive, looming elephant in the room, however. The Hindi film industry has had a long and chequered history of plagiarism when it comes to ‘original’ song compositions (so one can argue whether the outrage at remixes is justified considering many of Bollywood’s songs are plagiarised songs to begin with). The 80s and the 90s especially were rife with songs directly copied from songs in the West, whether it be a Hollywood movie soundtrack or a pop song. It speaks a lot of how much bigger the world was then when discoveries of copied songs only started to be made with the advent of YouTube and cable TV channels. 

This embarrassing fact notwithstanding, it doesn’t take away the emotional bond that so many form with music, whether it be original or copied. Music is universally loved by all regardless of race, culture, background and circumstances and songs aren’t just a collection of words and music thrown together but a powerful emotion often associated with happy or painful memories. For example, listening to a song one danced to in their childhood makes one feel like a child again, or listening to a sad melody can throw up memories of a period of heartbreak. This sort of emotional connection to music is something that shouldn’t be manipulated for the sake of profits but that is exactly the strategy that Hindi music labels are playing out. Choosing to remake once-popular songs is a conscious decision to cash in on the goodwill of those songs, but where music labels fail is not realising that remixing a song sullies the memory of that song instead of enhancing its goodwill.  

Of course, any music label that is geared towards profitability would never pursue a genre of music unless it translated to sales and ultimately, profits. Remixes are popular at the moment because there is a demand for them. There is a section of the public that consumes remixes, buys them and popularises them. However, the profits gained from these appear to be short-term. Even the most popular remixes tend to be forgotten within the space of a few months, and it’s almost irony in motion that somehow, the original songs that were remixed are retained in popular memory. This speaks to an endurance that ‘old-world’ music has despite technological advances in sound production and quality. There is no knowing that which direction the film music industry is going in, but if remixes are the way of the future, it only reinforces the notion that old is gold, after all, and as Karan Johar self depracatatingly joked in ‘Aankh Maare’ from Simmba: ‘Oh God! One more remix?!’ — But he went ahead and did the same in the film anyway.

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