Bollywood veteran singers question creativity in recent remakes

Bollywood’s obsession with remakes has been increasing day by day. Bollywood has been remaking old chart busters that are still fresh in people’s heart. While some remakes hit the right chord, many lie down deep inside the dark tunnel.

Bollywood veteran singers who originally sang those hit numbers are reportedly not happy with the remakes as they are ruining the true essence of the songs.

Recently, Pakistani singer Atif Aslam has been receiving criticisms for singing Lata Mangeshkar’s hit number ‘Chalte Chalte’ for an upcoming Bollywood movie ‘Mitron’.

IANS asked Lata Mangeshkar about her reaction on the recreated version of Chalte Chalte, to which she said that she hasn't heard it. “And I don’t want to hear it. This trend of remixing old songs saddens me. Where is the creativity in simply lifting acknowledged, beloved classics and shuffling the notes around? I’ve even heard that the lyrics are changed in the remixes. By whose consent?” She further said, “The original poets and composers wrote what they had to. Nobody has the right to tamper with the creativity of these great composers and lyricists”.

Earlier, when singer Babul Supriyo was asked about the song, he said, “Today, even the poetic term ‘artistic liberty’ is at the verge of extinction. With due respect (and disrespect) to Atif Aslam, as a singer myself, I will observe a 2-minute silence to mourn rather than offering a comment”.

Alka Yagnik also shared her reaction when asked about the recreation of her song ‘Dilbar Dilbar’. She said, “Why don’t they make a new song and make it a super hit if they can, instead of picking up an already super hit song, distorting it, and releasing it again, and then saying, ‘See, it’s become so popular!”.

So far, Bollywood film industry has recreated many iconic songs including few like ‘Laila Main Laila’ [in Shah Rukh Khan’s Raees], ‘Hawa Hawai’ [in Vidya Balan’s Tumhari Sulu], ‘Dil Kya Kare’ and 'Haseeno Ka Deewana' [in Hrithik Roshan’s Kaabil] and ‘Tamma Tamma’ [in Varun Dhawan-Alia Bhatt’s Badrinath Ki Dulhania].