Can't believe it.......heard Roja today after ages and the sounds are still so clean, fresh, and breezy...not sounding that outdated at all, despite it being 18 years old. Amazing compositions for ARR's debut......melodious, sweet, earthy, straight to the heart.
If there was one thing that I liked about ARR of the 90s that I don't hear much of these days is that ARR's songs back then had a lot more breathing room.......there was more space in the songs and the song arrangements were not as dense as they are today. The songs just breathed easier back then it seems, if I were to make a very broad and general comparison to today's songs. ARR also used minimal loops and more spacious arrangements, so you could hear more of "silence" in the slower compositions. "Tu Hi Re" is a great example of that. I hope you understand what I mean. Again, these are just observations of mine. I like his past songs equally to his current songs in general, but there are some broad differences, signifying Rahman's evolution as an artist and adding and subtracting elements of his compositional style and sound over time. I am just bowled over how NONE of his songs from the 1990s sound outdated whatsoever even today. That says volumes. One more thing......songs in those days...1990s to early 2000s in general were more "Indian" sounding....not just with ARR, but with other MDs too. The trend in bollywood and perhaps other industries too is to have more Western and global musical styles in film music with gradual shifting away from the ethnic Indian flavor of songs.....not completely, but the trend is there. ARR too used to have more "ethnic Indian" sounding albums back then, even for contemporary films like Saathiya, Taal, Dil Se that were not period films. Later, the "Ethnic Indian" sound would be confined mostly to period film scores or situational numbers, but with some exceptions. Delhi 6, Raavan, and Jodha Akbar are the 3 most Indian sounding albums recently and look how beautifully all 3 music albums were received and raved about. I think a lot of people are missing more of the "Indian" Rahman. Rahman's music over time has become more "international" and less "Indian" as a general trend....again with exceptions here and there.
