Here's a short analysis for today. Nothing very controversial happened, so it won't be long and ranting – don't worry.
First of all, the much publicized live orchestra. It was nice – lot of old, respected musicians apparently. But it probably wasn't a good idea having that for these kids. Either they were nervous by the presence of it all, or it simply didn't suit their tone – something was missing. Aishwarya also complained he couldn't hear himself. Basically it didn't add up to good performances, but it was a nice try.
Ismail Darbar was there. Just for that, I would ask Zee to watch this show. He looked cool, dark glasses, white suit and all. Connected with the audience and show as soon as he arrived, and was back in his groove. Abhijeet should take lessons from him on how to criticize and make it look good. However, I thought he was a bit harsh on Sharib when he rendered Aankhon ki gustakiyan in a slightly different style – but then, he's the MD. Maybe if I put myself in his shoes, I might be offended too if someone didn't follow my song exactly as I made it. Well, that's ID. Won't hesitate to say if he doesn't like anything. Although he was nice enough in the end to allow BS to sing with him as well, since he probably realized BS didn't perform any less than UA in this episode.
Hariharan probably senses that Leslie Lewis has an inherent liking for UA. Maybe that's why he asked Leslie to go ahead with his stars first, for their second performance. He was probably worried that Leslie might raise his own stars after seeing Hari give them only 4 stars.
Rajeev and Sanchali came back, with Padma Bhushan Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan in tow. There was some drama where the Ustad was sat on a chair and the new shishyas took turns feeding him sweets and paying respect. I'm happy for them. Reminded me of C2005, where the person who came 3rd got also some pretty decent compensation in the form of Subhash Ghai's movie songs.
The voting trends and AVs suggested that UA were more popular than BS – leading 70%-30%. Don't know how much of that is true, and how much is Gajji's vote enticing tactics. On the other hand, according to regional breakdown of votes, BS seem to be ahead overall. I think this comes down to the issue of multiple voting. UA may have fans, but they're probably not as die-hard as BS fans. Goes back to my earlier discussion of inspiring people to actually spend their money and vote for you, rather than simply send support in the form of good wishes and compliments. By that standard, BS seem to be doing better.
Finally the performances. Ujjaini was good today - she obviously learnt from previous mistakes and went soft on the higher notes today. Aishwarya wasn't good at all – not much feel in the Suraj Hua Madham song, made me realize how good of a singer Sharib is. Thankfully Ujjaini took care of the alaaps in this song, like Sharib had done when BS sang this at the beginning of EMAET. If we take this one common song and compare both jodis, BS come out looking much better. As ID told UA, stick to the 'sola baras ki, satra baras ka' songs. Ash has quite a way to go before he becomes Aishwarya Nigam.
Sharib was good in sur and singing, except for the extra harkatein he took in ID's song; and in the 2nd song, he was holding back his voice a bit, probably to keep in sync with bandh-bandh Banjo. Banjo was better than last week, did an okay job.
This is how individual performances ranked today, in my opinion
- Ujjaini – was good today
- Sharib – sang well
- Banjyotsna – improvement over last week
- Aishwarya – not good today
As far as stars are concerned, BS got 18 and UA got 19, but if you only look at singing stars (I don't care about Leslie) both of them got 8 each. I personally felt BS were slightly better today.
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