Best songs of year

Best songs of 1953: Wrap Up 3

 

Songs of Yore Award for the best duet goes to?

After the survey post on the best songs of 1953, I have already done Wrap Up 1 on the best male solos and Wrap Up 2 on the best female solos. Continuing the series I present the third Wrap Up on the best duets.

1953 filmsWhile surveying the music of 1953, Subodh made a somewhat radical statement that it was not a great year for male solos. Some other readers also too seemed to echo that sentiment. The absence of any great Rafi solo did make the year less diverse, and it ultimately became a one-horse (Talat Mahmood) race. Subodh was equally dismissive of female solos ‘Female solos too don’t do much either’. If a year had Ye zindagi usi ki hai, Ye sham ki tanhaiyan, Raja ki ayegi baraat, Aa ja ri aa nindiya tu aa, Hamare baad ab mahfil mein afsane bayan honge of Lata Mangeshkar, and great songs by Rajkumari, Shamshad Begum, Asha Bhosle, Geeta Dutt and Jagjit Kaur which we discussed, I would say it was as great a year as any. Nevertheless, it was a given that in the most of 1950s and 60s it was going to be a one-horse race (Lata Mangeshkar), which meant that one had to make special efforts to include ‘other’ female singers in the final list of ten.

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Best songs of 1953: Wrap Up 2

Songs of Yore award for the Best Female Playback Singer goes to Lata, Lata,.…..Lata Mangeshkar

Continuing the string of posts on the best songs of 1953, and Wrap Up 1 on the best male playback singer, I present here the second wrap up on the best female playback singer, based on the readers’ comments and my own preferences.

Lata Mangeshkar_Geeta Dutt_Shamshad Begum_Asha BhosleWho is the best female playback singer of 1953, is really a no-brainer. You can give slot 1 to 10 to Lata Mangeshkar, and there would be another ten outstanding songs, anyone of which could have made it to the list. So, writing the second wrap up on female playback songs boils down to looking carefully at the songs by ‘other’ singers to see how many can be included in the final list of ten, leaving the rest for ‘The Female Playback Singer’ of the Golden Era.

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Best songs of 1953: Wrap Up 1

Songs of Yore award for the Best Male Playback Singer goes to?

In the first Wrap Up I take a look at the best male solos of 1953. I am greatly helped by the readers’ comments on the survey article – Best songs of 1953 – which are not only very exhaustive, but much more involved and analytical compared to the last year when I did a similar string of posts on the songs of 1955. So, here is my attempt to summarise the sense of the House about the best male playback singer of 1953.

Rafi_Mukesh_Talat Mahmood_Hemant Kumar_Manna Dey_Kishore KumarA very general observation that comes out from the readers’ comments is that “it was not the year for male solos” (Subodh). Jignesh went further to say that the music of 1953 was the weakest in the entire 50s. However, it is interesting to note that it was the male solos which attracted the most intense and involved discussion, and I can point two reasons for that. One was Lata Mangeshkar – she alone accounted for as much as all the male songs taken together – we are grateful to Mr N Venkataraman for this observation based on a detailed statistical analysis. Such asymmetry always draws attention. The other reason to my mind is Mohammad Rafi – he is conspicuous by the absence of any great song which you would definitely like to include. This sent people on a feverish hunt for Rafi songs which, some felt, I might have missed to include in the shortlist. These explorers included Jignesh, Venkaramanji as well as Mr Ashok Vaishnav, who is a management professional, but who in his previous birth must have been a gold prospector. The result was that a lot many very good songs were added by these dedicated searchers, which were either unknown to me or which I had inadvertently missed. Most others such as Subodh, Anuradha Warrier, Gaddeswarupji, Kuldep Chauhan, Mr Arunkumar Deshmukh, Canasya and Mahesh Mamadapur confined themselves to my shortlist which had about two dozen male solos.

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Best songs of 1953: And the winners are?

1953 filmsSoY regulars would recall that last year I wrote a string of posts on the best songs of 1955. The idea came from the readers’ suggestion to do a yearwise review of the best songs of pre-Filmfare Award years. Even though Baiju Bawra (1952) became the first film to win the award for the  best music, it transpired that in later years, no film of 1953 or 1955 won the Filmfare award, whereas two films of 1954 – Taxi Driver and Nagin – won the award in the years 1955 and 1956 respectively. Without getting into the reasons for this discrepancy, I decided to make the record straight and covered the year 1955. From this logic, this year I am reviewing the songs of 1953 (I am proceeding in the reverse order as suggested by the readers). Thereafter, it would be the turn of 1951, after which the sequence would become regular.

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Best songs of 1955: Final Wrap Up 4

The SoY award for the best Music Director goes to?

Naushad-SD Burman-OP Nayyar-Shankar Jaikishan-C Ramchandra-NashadThis is like completing the circle, which means you come to the same point from where you started. So I look back at the mother post on the overview of the best songs of 1955  and I am amazed at the overwhelming response it generated, both in numbers and quality. As I said earlier, the methodology is not some kind of poll, but trying to capture the sense of the house. The SoY regulars would also recall that at the readers’ suggestions, I also wrote categoriwise summaries – Wrap Up 1 for the best male playback singer; Wrap Up 2 for the best female playback singer and Wrap Up 3 on the best duets. These are parts of the whole. Therefore, it is obvious that the final wrap up on the best music director would also draw a great deal from these subsidiary posts.  Here I am presenting the final wrap up of the string of posts that originated from the readers’ suggestions and which took shape as we moved on, as my Christmas and New Years Greetings to all.

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Best songs of 1955: Wrap Up 3

The SoY award for the best duet goes to?

Pyar hua iqraar huaNow this series is about to come to an end. My first first wrap up on the best male solos had a similar question mark as there was indeed a tough choice between all the top singers Mohamad Rafi, Mukesh, Talat Mahmood, Manna Dey, Hemant Kumar and Kishore Kumar. In the second wrap-up on the best female solos, the surprise was gone because it was a choice between Lata Mangeshkar, Lata Mangeshkar, Lata Mangeshkar….That would be the situation most of the 1950’s and 60’s. For the duet, the great diversity comes back. Rarely there would be another year with so many great duets in the voices of all the great singers. Most of the duets have become a landmark in our film music history. For a comprehensive list you may refer to the mother post on the Best songs of 1955.  Here I am selecting the best ten duets, which are not in the order of preference.

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Best Songs of 1955: Wrap Up 2

SoY award for the best female playback singer goes to Lata, Lata, Lata, Lata….Mangeshkar

(It is a while since I wrote the survey article on the Best songs of 1955 and its first wrap up on the Best male playback singer of 1955. Then a number of interesting themes came up, and completing this string of posts somehow went out of sight. By the time I remembered, it was coming quite close to Lata Mangeshkar’s birth anniversary. Therefore, I am coinciding it with her anniversary as my greetings to her. I realise this is not a satisfactory way of handling this series. Hopefully from the next year onwards I should be able to complete a particular year’s posts in continuity. – AK)

Lata Mangeshkar_Geeta Dutt_Shamshad Begum_Asha BhosleWhen I wrote the first wrap up on the best male playback singers of 1955, I posed it with a question mark, and as we saw, there was indeed a tough choice between all the six great male playback singers – Rafi, Mukesh, Talat Mahmood, Hemant Kumar, Manna Dey and Kishore Kumar. The scenario changes completely in the case of female playback singers. Not only in 1955, but most of the 50’s and 60’s you could pick up ten top songs and they might all be Lata Mangeshkar’s. Never had any playback singer dominated more than this, nor anyone has done so since. Therefore, my using a similar question mark to maintain the form would be like a recent award function anchored by Shahrukh Khan. This was when Vidya Balan was wining all the awards for Dirty Picture. After the customary ‘And the award for the best actor (female) goes to..’, the envelope containing her name was announced. When she jumped with excitement, Shahrukh Khan snapped at her, ‘Vidya, you should stop acting, you know that you are going to get the award.’

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Best songs of 1955: Wrap Up 1

Songs of Yore Award for the best male playback singer goes to?

My survey article on the Best songs of 1955 attracted a good deal of response. Some readers gave not only their shortlist of favourite five in different categories but also a detailed analytical, musical and emotional reasoning for their choice. As this exercise was becoming mammoth, a suggestion came that I should do category wise summary posts. Meanwhile Ashok Vaishnavji has posted two excellent summaries on his own blog (Part 1 and Part 2) based on his comments posted on this blog. It has been wonderful reading all the comments. Here is the first wrap-up on the best male playback singer of the year.

clip_image001This was the year when Mohammad Rafi sang O door ke musafir; Mukesh Mera joota hai Japani; Talat Mahmood Tasweer banata hun tasweer nahi banti; Hemant Kumar Chup hai dharti chup hai chand sitare; Manna Dey Tu pyar ka sagar hai and Kishore Kumar Jeevan ke safar me rahi. Each iconic, extremely popular, memorable till even today and musically excellent. Rarely would you have a similar year when all the six great singers of the Golden Era gave everlasting songs. How does one reduce this to one or two? It would be obviously subjective, but let me start by listing the best ten songs of the year about which there should not be much dispute. It is not intended to be in order of merit, but simply grouped by singers.

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Best songs of 1955: And the winners are!

1955 films

I am delighted to present a survey of the best songs of 1955 and invite the readers to an interactive discussion to choose the best songs, singers and music director. For this post I have to thank the readers AM and KR Vaishampayan who suggested while discussing the music of Mughal-e-Azam (which failed to win the Filmfare award for 1960 films!) that I do a year wise survey of music of films of 1953-45 in reverse order and place it for in-depth analysis, comments and suggestions by the readers. They suggested 1953 as the year because the first Filmfare awards were given in 1954.

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