Tamil film music stopped asking us to listen
A personal view on Ilaiyaraaja, A.R. Rahman, Anirudh, and why Tamil cinema has traded the album for the hook.
Tamil film music used to stay with us.
Not for a weekend. Not until the next trailer. For years.
A song could carry a childhood, a bus ride, a rainy evening, a heartbreak, or an entire period of life. We did not need a film scene, a reel, or a hero-entry video to remember it. The music was enough.
That is what I miss.
The music that stayed
Ilaiyaraaja did not merely compose songs. He built emotional architecture.
Listen carefully to his best work. The bass has a life of its own. The flute is not decoration. The interlude does not fill time. The arrangement changes the meaning of the lyric. He could use folk, Carnatic music, Western harmony, and a full orchestra without making any of it feel like a display of intelligence.
The music served the emotion.
His songs did not need a loud scene to become memorable. They created the scene inside your head.
Ilaiyaraaja has not faded. His new music has faded from the centre of Tamil cinema. His old music has not.
That is why filmmakers keep returning to it. They know an old Ilaiyaraaja song can achieve in ten seconds what a new background score sometimes cannot achieve in ten minutes. It comes with memory, melody, and emotional truth already built in.
But this is where Tamil audiences need to grow up.
A great past does not make anyone beyond criticism.
I do not think Ilaiyaraaja’s recent work has consistently reached the level of his earlier work. Saying that is not disrespect. It is the minimum honesty that art deserves.
Rahman opened a new world
The same applies to A.R. Rahman.
Rahman changed Tamil film music forever. He changed the sound of the studio, the sound of the voice, the sound of rhythm, and the ambition of the whole industry. After Roja, Tamil cinema sounded as if someone had opened a window to a bigger world.
But Rahman’s greatness was never just technology.
He gave songs space. He could make a whisper sound larger than an orchestra. His best albums had melody, mystery, emotion, and surprise. Every song felt like it came from a different room in the same house.
Today, I still hear flashes of that genius. But flashes are not albums.
Recent Rahman music has not consistently given Tamil cinema the kind of complete musical worlds he once created. We keep protecting him from this conversation because the old work is so extraordinary. But legacy should not become a lifetime pass from criticism.
Anirudh and the formula
Then comes Anirudh.
Anirudh is not untalented. That would be an unserious argument.
He understands the current commercial-film machine better than anyone. He knows how to build a hero entry. He knows how to give fans a chant. He knows how to make a theatre explode. He knows exactly how to create a musical clip that will travel through trailers, fan edits, reels, and stadium speakers.
He has mastered impact.
But impact is not the same as music that lasts.
Too much of his recent work feels like the same formula at different volumes.
Bass. Beat. Chant. Drop. Hero walk. Whistle.
Again.
Bass. Beat. Chant. Drop. Hero walk. Whistle.
Again.
At some point, it stops feeling like elevation and starts feeling like noise.
Not because it is electronic. Rahman used electronics better than almost anyone.
Not because it is loud. Ilaiyaraaja could be louder, bigger, and more dramatic when the moment needed it.
It feels like noise because modern Tamil cinema has forgotten contrast.
Every scene wants a high. Every hero wants an anthem. Every punch wants an announcement. Every line wants to become a social-media clip. The score does not wait for the emotion. It orders the audience to feel it.
When every moment is elevated, nothing is elevated.
Tamil cinema traded the album for the hook
Tamil cinema has traded the album for the hook.
It has traded replay value for reaction value.
It has traded musical memory for instant stimulation.
That is not only Anirudh’s fault. He is the most successful response to what the industry now rewards. The problem is bigger. Producers want opening-weekend energy. Stars want fan moments. Social media wants fifteen-second clips. Theatres want whistles.
Nobody is asking for a song that will still matter in twenty years.
No musician should become a god
And then there is the worship around Ilaiyaraaja.
Calling him Isaignani is respect. Calling him a god is a mistake.
No artist should become so sacred that listeners cannot say, “This recent work does not move me.”
No artist should become so large that younger musicians are treated as inferior before they are heard.
No artist should be allowed to turn disagreement into disrespect.
Anyone can make music. Not everyone can make great music. Not everyone can create a catalogue like Ilaiyaraaja’s.
But nobody owns music itself.
His copyright battles raise the same question. Artists deserve royalties. Producers and labels should not use work without permission or fair payment. That is not ego. That is a legitimate fight.
But there is a difference between protecting art and turning every relationship into a legal warning.
The public does not separate art from the artist forever. How an artist treats collaborators, audiences, younger musicians, and criticism becomes part of the legacy too.
What I am waiting for
Tamil music does not need more gods.
It needs better songs.
It needs composers who trust melody again. Directors who allow silence. Producers who want albums, not just promotional hooks. Audiences willing to listen beyond the first beat drop.
I am not waiting for the next viral anthem.
I am waiting for the next song that follows me home.