Adnan Sami has slammed the increasingly convenient industry practice of churning out remixes from past hit songs. The composer-singer has argued that while music companies conveniently blame that trend on the audience, the truth is that the listeners are starved for original content, but the stakeholders aren’t servicing those needs these days.

‘Corporates are scared to experiment’

Adnan Sami claimed that while he doesn’t mind remixing old songs, he has a contention with how the ratio between originals and remixes has shifted from 80:20 to 20:80 now. “The corporates are scared to experiment. It is happening even in cinemas. Remakes are attempted, sequels are made; even prequels are planned! Off-shoots are also working,” Sami said on the Game Changers podcast.

He quoted the example of Batman films. Once DC hit a saturation making Batman movies over decades, it decided to make a franchise out of a spin-off. Hence, came Todd Phillip’s 2019 psychological thriller Joker. The Joaquin Phoenix-starrer was a spin-off of Batman’s arch nemesis. It was followed by a sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, a couple of years ago, which didn’t yield desired results.

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He even pointed out that Christopher Nolan’s recent blockbuster action adventure fantasy The Odyssey isn’t the first film adaptation of Greek scholar Homer’s ancient poem. Mario Camareni also adapted it into the 1954 classic Ulysses, starring Kirk Douglas as the protagonist Odysseus. However, Nolan’s The Odyssey has now amassed almost $1.5 billion at the worldwide box office.

Adnan Sami argued that while sequels were also made of classics like Francis Ford Coppola’s 1972 gangster epic The Godfather and George Lucas’ 1999 space opera Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, “this was not a regular thing.” The same trend has thus trickled down to Indian cinema and music, where only stanzas of songs from 1970s, ’80s, ’90s are tweaked, while retaining the memorable chorus and hook line.

Music labels starving the audience

Sami also countered the claims of music labels that they’re making remixes since that’s the audience’s demand. “If you ask someone, Why are you feeding him sookhe chawal (dry rice)?,’ he’d reply, ‘That’s what he wants. See how much he’s savouring it.’ But he’s savouring it as you didn’t serve him khichdi or biryani,” argued the composer, lamenting that this generation of listeners won’t have any Hindi songs to hold on to as their own, as a result.

He also insisted that instead of blaming music composers for churning out remixes, it’s the music labels that should be held accountable. “I can give you in writing that no music director ever dreamed as a child that he would grow up and work on remixes. So, don’t blame them. Blame those who make them do it by force,” added Sami.

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In a recent interview with SCREEN, Adnan Sami lauded Zee Music for encouraging him to take a leap with his music, instead of sticking to the familiar trope of adding a “desi tadka” to everything he creates. “Sometimes, when I suggest something that’s slightly ‘safe’, they say, ‘No no, we’re with you on that. Go that direction.’ Which big label does that today? We’re living at a time when everyone tries to play safe, which is also sad,” he said.