I realize it's early and that Rahman's music grows: Pluses: - Great use of symphonic elements like choir, strings with elaborate arrangements and sounds. - Fresh sounding overall. - A bold effort by Rahman - Strong mukhada (asthai, chorus) melodies - Good singing and expressions - Good lyrics - Out of the box creativity shows strongly - Good range and variety - Zindagi is just amazing - Great experimentation with novel fusion (Western musical with Indian classical) - Effort by Rahman shows a lot of courage and hard work in most songs.
Minuses: - Some songs with very weak melodies and with overall weak melodies in Antaras (hard to remember the tune of Dil Ka Rishta and Mastam, low hummability) - Shano Shano and its remix to me are a complete waste. One of the worst songs ever by Rahman IMO (many will strongly disagree witih me, I I know). - Some gimmicky elements with too much of Subhash Ghai influence at times - Weak rhythm sections with too much use of light keyboard hip hop rhtyhsms and less of ethnic percussion. The punch is missing. - Lack of any instrumentals - Different genre of music that is thus far foreign to North Indian tastes and may be met with resistance in the beginning. - Large carnatic influence in the music, which is not a bad thing, but again, which Northies may not be used to. That's it for now!
