Karthik S @milliblog

Discover new music, every week; language no bar! #MilliblogWeeklies - India's only weekly new music playlist. milliblog.com Bangalore Joined August 2008

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Karthik S @milliblog

4 days ago

@jagann Still going on. Kumbhabhishekam in mid-July.

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Karthik S @milliblog

5 days ago

Traveling this weekend (a visit to our family diety at Puthucode... at Bhagavathy Amman temple, near Palakkad). So, no Weeklies. Hopefully next weekend.

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Karthik S @milliblog

5 days ago

@balajicramani Will try! But traveling all of this weekend and even Weeklies is not possible 😭 Will aim for next weekend, both.

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Karthik S @milliblog

2 weeks ago

@siraj82 Yes! 'Vizhigalil Thondriyae' from Moondram KaN, and 'Doki Doki' from ParimaLa & Co.

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Karthik S @milliblog

2 weeks ago

I have just 5 songs worth a playlist this weekend! So, pushing Milliblog Weeklies to next weekend.

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Karthik S @milliblog

2 weeks ago

Very interesting! I wonder if film composers outside Tamil Nadu and Kerala (from Bollywood, Telugu and Kannada film industries) have cleared the Trinity College London exams (in Chennai).

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Karthik S @milliblog

2 weeks ago

"Do you know the entry to Dawood’s house was going to have a romantic Anand-Milind song at one point?"

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Karthik S @milliblog

2 weeks ago

@SureshChidambar Try now - just seeing this... tried the website and it is working.

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Milliblog Weeklies, Week 305 tinyurl.com/MAY31-2026mb Vintage Amit Trivedi, Sean's enjoyable foul-mouthed song, Thaman's outstanding new song, a charming Hindi-Malayalam pop single, a Sai Abhyankkar knock-off's Jackson'esque turn, and more.

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Karthik S @milliblog

3 weeks ago

Why does every mofussil bus driver in Tamil Nadu inevitably gravitate towards Ilaiyaraja's music?

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Karthik S @milliblog

4 weeks ago

Milliblog Weeklies, Week 304 tinyurl.com/MAY24-2026mb Hatrick by A R Rahman (Hindi) and Hiphop Tamizha, new songs from Ilaiyaraja, Vishal Mishra, Pritam (addressing the plagiarism controversy too), Sachin-Jigar, DSP, Sooraj S Kurup, Curry, Vijai Bulganin and more.

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Karthik 🇮🇳 @beastoftraal

4 weeks ago

Karuppu, to me, was a lot more about potential than execution. Balaji had an excellent set-up that brings (while also exaggerating) a really meaningful human angle in the beginning. It's mostly relatable and you want something to be done about the injustice you see. And when the 'rules' were set, it really made me sit up. Here was a script that doesn't take the easy way out and forces a 'superhero' to adhere to rules of the opponent. But there's exactly just one payoff to that angle, with the hero using one trick to level the playing field. After that, despite a inventive quirk using a 'boundary', all we see is repeated variations of the same use of superhero'dom. No more intelligence or thinking. The ending, clearly inspired by a 2022 film (no spoilers) comes on the back of many similar previous scenes of the same nature. It is well filmed, of course, but by that time, I had lost the patience and also the expectation that there would be some more thought infused in the narrative. There was so much potential in the early stretch and it is a pity that it didn't follow through.

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Karthik S @milliblog

4 weeks ago

@raghuveer_v Yeah, pretty close.

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Karthik S @milliblog

4 weeks ago

"Ilaiyaraaja did not merely compose songs; he composed memories".

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Karthik 🇮🇳 @beastoftraal

a month ago

This is an AI-generated video by agency WPP, celebrating the blazing arrival of Ilaiyaraaja with the Tamil film AnnakkiLi in 1976 - 50 years of Ilaiyaraaja's music. There is no doubt that AnnakkiLi was a musical trendsetter and Ilaiyaraaja a genius. But I have a fundamental disconnect with the narrative. The film's central image (a working-class crowd frantically queuing outside a music store to buy a vinyl LP) is consumerist, individualist mythology grafted onto a communal, scarcity-era cultural moment. It transplants a 2020s "hype drop" sensibility into 1976 Tamil Nadu, where very few people even owned a record player. The real story is actually far more remarkable. AnnakkiLi conquered Tamil Nadu with no music video, no streaming, no owned copy for most listeners... just the raw power of melody, transmitted communally through AIR, through thiruvizha loudspeakers, through cinema halls where people returned again and again, primarily to hear the songs. Ilaiyaraaja himself describes this in the film (as a voice-over): one radio turned up loud in a house, and every neighboring house tuning in. That is how music went 'viral' in 1976. The film contains its own better story, but ignores it. My second, deeper disconnect is with the AI-generated sepia and B&W "photographs" peppered through the video. If the film used only video, we'd easily read it as dramatization. But static, weathered imagery triggers a different notion. We're conditioned to treat old photographs as documentary evidence. Using AI-generated stills attempts to turn a romanticized myth into historical proof. It manufactures a false memory of that past... closer to visual gaslighting. The agency likely chose the "queue for the record" narrative because it's more relatable to a 2020s audience. In doing so, they swapped the richer, truer story for a lesser one. PS: There's also a factual error. The radio announcer opens with "You are listening to All India Radio, 101.4 MHz". But 101.4 MHz is FM Rainbow Chennai, launched February 1, 1993, 17 years after AnnakkiLi released (May 14, 1976). FM didn't exist in India in 1976. The announcer would have probably said "AkashvaaNi Madras" on Medium Wave. #music #AI #creativity

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Karthik S @milliblog

a month ago

Have just 4-5 new, worthy songs shortlisted from last week's new releases. Pushing Weeklies to next weekend.

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Karthik 🇮🇳 @beastoftraal

a month ago

"Despite his songs playing on the radio or cassette, it was not like I was a Raaja sir fan then (n the early-2000s and I was not even in my teens). But, as fate would have it, I found Raaja sir again. Or rather rediscovered him in my late 20s. The more I listened to people, directors, writers I admire talk about him, the more I understood why he and his music mean so much to Tamil people. How the songs in the popular parlance are only scratching the surface of the magic he has produced and it would take a life-time to fully to study and absorb the sheer magnitude of what he has done for not just one or two, but four generations in five decades."

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Karthik 🇮🇳 @beastoftraal

a month ago

Thoroughly enjoyed this new ad for AVT tea, featuring Vijay Sethupathi and Rana Daggubati (agency: Turrino). It's a simple premise of the duo planning to have tea together and start exchanging notes on their favorite tea-drinking moments from their lives. Every one of their experience is divided by geography - Chennai vs. Hyderabad. Tamil vs. Telugu. But two things unite them. AVT tea, of course, is one of them, but it was the other unifying factor that charmed me effortlessly, considering the multilingual proficiency and state-agnostic (particular in these 2 states) popularity of the person. What/who is that? Watch the ad :)