Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Airtel Super Singer western round – Day 1

Western round began last night with 7 singers still left in the competition. This round threw up some interesting possibilities as Prasanna, Ajeesh and Vijay escaped elimination last week. This week contestants might not be that lucky. All of them have to perform well to get through and there will surely be elimination this round (At least that’s what I hope).

My guess this week was that it will be tough for Renu and Ajeesh as rest of the pack will pull it off with comfort. Okay now coming back to last night’s show, I knew that there will only be 3 singers performing and the night started with Ranjani.

Ranjani began the western round with “Jillunnu oru Kadhal” song. This was a Jazz composition by AR Rahman, sung by Tanvi in the original. Ranjani did a fair job. Even though there were few errors here and there overall Ranjani’s attitude impressed the judges. She was rightly spot selected.

Sometimes during this season Vijay TV seems to go out of the way to extend or prolong super singer 2008. It’s really very irritating as the viewers have been watching it for almost a year and all of us would want to know who the super singer is. I did not get the idea of making the singers sing the song which they have prepared if they were not spot selected. This was another cheap trick to make sure that there are only three singers performing on the first evening on the show.
Anyways my frustrations aside, the second singer of the night was Vijay. As I mentioned earlier this is a bread and butter round for Vijay “Adams” (As he is called by the judges). Vijay is very comfortable with western songs which he has constantly proven in the previous rounds. Vijay sang “Uyirin Uyire” from “Kaaka kaaka”, the original sung by one of my favorite singers Kay kay. Vijay did a fantastic job. His attitude and improvisations were brilliant and as Srinivas rightly said Vijay knows how to perform on stage. He always displays right energy and attitude required for a western number. Vijay was spot selected and was requested to sing “Hotel California” song on the final night of the competition. That was the song he would have sung if did not get spot selected.

So that makes it 2 in 2. The final singer of the night was Ravi (The classical Guru of the group). Ravi sang “Oh Mama Mama” from the movie Minnale, another Harris Jeyraj song. He did a good job and with the hood pulled over his head he gave a rap song effect to the performance. There were few mistakes or probably I should say some improvements pointed out by Unni but overall everyone liked his performance. He was spot selected too. He was asked to sing his other song choice again and he sang a Linkin Park song.

So three singers perform on the first evening and all three get spot selected. This leaves Prasanna, Raghini, Renu and Ajeesh to perform on the second night. It will be very interesting to see how Renu performs. We have seen her struggle with breath while singing fast numbers in the past and let’s see how she goes. I don’t think that Raghini and Prasanna would have any issues in this round.

That’s all about last night’s show and just before I end this piece just wanted to mention that Malini Yugendran at last gave Yugendran chance to talk last night and hopefully this trend continues. I am just fed up of the bad pronunciations and horrible anchoring by Malini.

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