Pressure to rehash old songs comes only from producers: Amit Trivedi

Ace music composer Amit Trivedi says no Bollywood music director or singer he knows likes recreating old songs, but have to compromise owing to the pressure from film producers and big labels.

The trend of rehashing old film numbers has caught up fast with Bollywood music directors.

Amit, known for giving music for Dev D, Bombay Velvet, Queen and Lootera, calls the growing trend a step down as he does not feel it is plausible to touch a song, which was once "someone else's vision".

"For creators, especially for me as a composer, I am sure for singers also, it is sad. It is not exciting that we have to create something that someone else has already done before. It is someone else's baby, which we would not like to touch, because at that time it was that person's vision. It is difficult to do in a film format," Amit told reporters.

"The pressure is only from the producers and the labels. No composer, no singer would ever want to sing a remix. I don't know about others, but there are definitely a lot of people, I know, who don't want to do someone else's songs in films. It's the producers and the labels' pressure that we are catering to. Because we are a part of that (the system), we have to do that job. You should all ask this question to them as to why are they doing it," he added.

Amit was speaking at the launch of Amazon Prime Video's new original, The Remix, in Mumbai on Wednesday.

The reality show, which has Amit as one of the judges, will see aspiring singers and music producers collaborate to recreate old film songs.

Amit said that for a show like The Remix, the concept of recreation works well as the musicians put in an effort to add their flavour to the original composition and completely turn it around.

"Here, we have a proper format. The show is about remixes. So, it works beautifully and fantastically well here. But for films, if you ask me, it is sad," he added.

Besides Amit, playback singer Sunidhi Chauhan and DJ Nucleya are the other two names on the jury panel.

Sunidhi echoed the music composer's sentiments and said that a song that has been recreated tastefully would always sound good.

"Any song, which has been done tastefully, will sound nice. Even I like a couple of songs, but I don't like most of them because they are just the repetition of what has already been done. But on this show, we are not just remixing the song.

"Remixing has become a loosely-used term. We are going beyond that. Contestants on this show have actually made the original compositions sound new, by adding new elements like different sounds, new composition, rap, etc to them..." she said.

Television actor Karan Tacker will host the series that begins streaming from March 9 on Amazon Prime Video.