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| Edited By: Prachita Pandey |Source: DNA |Updated: Nov 27, 2017, 06:25 AM IST
After his recent cameo in Aamir Khan’s Secret Superstar, Shaan made his debut on YouTube with his own channel with his first single, Surilee. He also returns as a coach on The Voice India Kids 2. In a candid conversation, the singer talks about his single, how times have changed, and what’s keeping him busy.
Yes, of course! There’s going to be a single every 15-20 days on my channel now, which could be a mix of covers of old songs called Return To Romance, mashups like O Hansini and Chand Mera Dil, mainstream songs kickstarted with Surilee, and the third series would be covers.
Yeah. When you listen to an album of about 10 songs by the same artiste, you get to spend time with that voice. Today, those 45 or 50 minutes time of an album have been reduced to under four minutes. People have so many options, thanks to digitisation, that they don’t hold on to one thing for that long. It’s almost become impossible, though they’re still creating digital albums of audio songs but it’s not the same as it used to be. The consumption is not the same either. Earlier, you used to buy a physical CD, or audio cassettes before that, so you had to make its value (price) worth it. Now, there is so much on the digital medium that you don’t have to provide more than that one track that you really want to push. So, cutting an album wouldn’t seem like a wise thing any more.
Earlier, I never had to be proactive, create songs, make videos, go out there to promote them. I was fortunate that way. But times have changed. The generation is different. People are putting in two-three hours in creating something and 20 hours in promoting it. You either move to a house on a holiday and chill or you play the game the way it’s played. I’m in no mood to quit because this is my passion. It gives me happiness to connect with people, to put my music out and get reactions from people. That is my holiday.
(Smiles) I think today everyone is doing exceptional work, especially with technology and because certain norms are allowed to be broken, everyone sounds great. Everyone sounds the same more or less because the same processing is going in every voice and the same technology is being used. Among girls, I think Jonita Gandhi has her own distinct personality and has a good control on her voice, range and pitch. Then there’s Armaan Mallik as well. Sabhi achhe hain par yehi do naam le lete hain. If there’s anyone who’s extraordinary, it’s Arijit Singh but I feel that he’s so overexposed and overexploited, it’s getting monotonous. And sometimes you realise that it’s not even him singing because everyone else is singing like him. That’s one thing I can say that whenever I sing one or two songs, you can tell it’s me, because I haven’t copied anyone, neither has anyone copied me. So it has a certain tonality.
