‘Marana Mass‘ from Petta is a great way to introduce a film to the fans of Rajinikanth by the die-hard fans of Rajinikanth. Right from director Karthik Subbaraj to actors Bobby Simha, Vijay Sethupathi and music composer Anirudh Ravichander, almost everybody in the Petta team has confessed to the media at some point or the other that they’re great fans of Rajini.
And well, this shows in the song. Anirudh relies on drums small and large to get the beats going. He also recruits himself for the position of cheerleader. The pallavi and charanam of the song feature Anirudh rallying the forces as he sings about the guy who will put you in place if you ever try to act too big for your shoes. The slang here is courtesy lyricist Vivek who gave us the indecipherable ‘Simtaangaran’ earlier this year.
Things are not so bad here. Words like ‘tough-u’ and ‘bulb-u’ find their place as do ‘vengai‘ (king). Vivek reserves his more respectful, albeit staid poetry for SP Balasubramaniam. Here, one finds the usual spiel about the hero being the sort of man who will respect you if you face off against him in order to fight for justice. We also get the: ‘Evan da mela, evan da keezha‘ bit. In SPB’s sonorous voice, these lyrics are transformed into something else.
However, one does wish for days where there were flights of fancy in a Rajini song. Like the ration card for one’s goats and cows. And perhaps even mentions of Cauvery and ‘kai kuthal arisi’.
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There’s nothing quite so nostalgic in ‘Marana Mass‘. It remains a song about the mass aspects of the star, which is most likely the one and only thing millennials seem to understand. And as a film that stands on the shoulders of people who could very well be the millennials of the cinema industry, this song is an attempt at charting out new territory for Rajinikanth.
Lingaa saw him hopelessly lost. Kabali and Kaala‘s political overtones gave fans very few mass moments to scream their hearts to.
With the faintest possible trace of politics and the lexicon of a twenty-one-year-old, ‘Marana Mass‘ is a lightweight track that offers the youth of today a problem-free platform upon which they can celebrate Rajinikanth.