Sunday, June 3, 2007

Indian Reality TV - Song shows....Absolutely disgusting!

Televised reality singing shows have become as ubiquitous in India as the Personal Computer! Nearly every soap channel in India have their own song shows/contests.
Some bring their participants from the streets and some are classically trained. However esoteric the source may be, the shows are no less of any well-directed drama these days. Take for example the stupid Idol series, which had its roots in Pop Idol of UK. It soon inspired American Idol, Australian Idol, New Zealand Idol, our very own Indian Idol and many more. I have watched a few episodes of the Idol series….some out of compulsion some out of curiosity.
Talking about Indian shows apart from Indian Idol, there are nearly half a dozen shows telecasted on almost all popular TV Channels. …
Zee TV 's got their insane Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge series going for sometime now. The Sa Re Ga Ma Pa series got so famous that Zee has introduced it on its regional language channels too for e.g. on Zee Marathi. What’s more they even had Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Kids Challenge!

Sa Re Ga Ma brings singers/mentors in the form of some big names from the Bollywood or Indian music industry. Each mentor has his own participant on the show and the participants battle it out in the middle. Sometimes instead of the participants, the mentors battle it out and criticize/argue each other like school kids. In addition to the singing skills of the participants we also get to witness some brilliant altercating skills of the judges. It adds spice but it gets hell boring after a while.
One of the prime reasons, I hate Sa Re Ga Ma Pa is irritating Mr Himesh Reshammiya. He is one of the judges on the show. Boy,this guy sucks big time. He makes my skin crawl.I just love to hate him and his songs. He sings through his nose most of the time and his songs are a torture. I guess they should be used in prison cells or courts. The accused may instead prefer to live in solitary confinement rather than listening to such annoying crappy stuff. His so called songs have got a very few lines and he sings them over and over again in a song which is very irritating.

The other reason I hate Sa Re Ga Ma Pa is that 99.99% of the songs being sung are Indipop or Bollywoodish. And Indipop = mediocre. Same goes for modern Bollywood songs. No one even attempts to sing different.

Coming back to Indian Idol…The only good part about this show is that the first coupla rounds are at least interesting in the sense that there are some crazy candidates coming in and demonstrating something more than singing skills. They dance, act, cry, beg, dress wierdly and do all things possible! Well, at least that makes me laugh.

There was this guy on some Indian Idol show….He starts to sing…Ahem!! ….I mean he was making an attempt to sing but was miles away from melody. Anu Malik stops him in between and says,.” Dude, this is Indian Idol. You can’t sing. There is no way you can even participate in any competition.” The guy goes “ Who’s here to win or participate? I just wanted to see and meet you”. LOL! That was funny.

One more...A guy in Indian Idol 2007 walks in with a disheveled look. He starts singing and Alisha Chinai asks him to stop. The guy doesn’t. He keeps on singing. Alisha goes nuts….And to add to the humor…Anu Malik and Alisha Chinai tell the other judges that they would go for a short walk until this guy keeps singing. They literally walk out and come after a while and the guy is still singing!!…Anu Malik goes “अरे तुम अभी तक यहीं हो ?” (Oh, Are you still here?). Then they pass their verdict that he can’t go to the second round. This guy walks in to shake hands with all the judges and just as he finishes shaking hands with the judges, he grabs the Indian Idol Ticket for the next round and runs out of the room! The security stops him. Anu Malik comes out running and snatches the ticket from this guy and says “ Indian Idol कोई मजाक नही है” (Indian Idol is not a joke)!!
Incidents like these make it more interesting. But after the first few rounds, when most of the participants are short listed, Indian Idol gets monotonous like the other song shows. They all sing the same stuff - Indipop songs and some ridiculous tunes from Bollywood.

I hate Australian Idol and American Idol for the same reason. They all sing pop songs! Come on ppl. Where is Rock? Nope, we won't get to see that in India atleast. All the telecasters/producers want is TRP ratings. And audiences in India want popish tunes all the time. That means there are going to be more useless disgusting shows like Sa Re Ga Ma Pa and Indian Idol. Hell with that...I will stick to VH1. A true music channel playing all kinds music ranging from Rock, Metal to Hip Hop, RnB and Trance… except of course shitty Indipop. Thanks VH1. You Rock.

3 comments:

Amit said...

Mate, not everyone appreciates rock music. The reason they sing pop is because pop/modern bollywood/current day music is thats whats happening on the music stations around. These shows are aimed towards the younger crowd and chances are they couldnt tell a James Hetfield from a Kurt Cobain (or Kishore Kumar from Kumar Sanu). Besides you wouldnt want to listen to some idiot blur out lines from your favorite classic. So let things remain, your best bet is to stage protests like these on the blog :)) Keep filling us in on the latest chyu-giri :)

Oh btw, I watched the Marathi sa re ga ma pa and was really impressed by the contestants. Part of that maybe because I was watching the show when it was coming towards the finale, but it felt good to see some talent perform.

Anonymous said...

Here is a dedicated site for Saregamapa challenge 2007

Unknown said...

Amit,not that I hate each and every pop song and want to see rock all the time. But the thing is they don't want to sing anything different...Not even Indian rock or Indian hip hop if there is any!Just one or two different songs in a show would add variety .It absolutely gets irritating with same kinda songs.Innit?...Maybe u are right when u said its aimed at the younger public and hence the mushy pop songs always...
Oh btw! Would like to point out that our Marathi Sa Re Ga Ma Pa is always better than the Hindi version! I would always watch it rather than Indipopped Hindi version.