I rate the 1985 song, Everybody Wants To Rule The World as my top ten songs from the 1980s that I can hear all day long. I said this before in one of my posts and I will say it again – the 1980s was a golden year for both the English & Tamil music industry with some of the evergreen songs being composed by great musicians around the world. Image source: Youtube
I thought it is best to start the year with a Tamil classic from the early 1980s which has some of the best soundtracks by Illayarajaa. Image source: Amazon
(The many faces of the great man in multiple roles all these years and he still making headlines even now. Image source: http://www.bollywoodlife.com)
In terms of acting, after the great Sivaji Ganesan, we were lucky to have Kamal Haasan taking up the lead when it comes to powerful acting. And over the years, he has not let us down with powerful storyline and acting (still remember this?).
Western classical music is perspective – look at the number of people involved in a symphony! Our traditional music is lonely – Ilaiyaraaja
A very young Ilaiyaraaja with the very talented SP Bala and S. Janaki in the early 1980s during a recording session. Image source: The Federal
As long I could remember, I have been listening to Ilaiyaraaja music since I was still young and started to have an appreciation of his style of music – all the way from the 1970s (you are aware that Annakili was not his first movie and that he had to impress the producer Panchu Arunachalam by singing a song that his mother sang and using the table as a music instrument?) to his latest flick in “Neethane En Ponvasantham” – thanks to my Dad who was a big fan of Ilaiyaraaja (Ilaiyaraaja means the “younger” Raja – that is because the Tamil music industry already had another music director named Raja – the famed A.M. Raja).