Isolation of song from story leaves no space for memorable lyrics: Javed Akhtar

New Delhi: Poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar said lyrics today don’t work the way they did earlier because they are not rooted in a film’s story and its emotions. The 78-year-old has written some immortal lyrics for songs such as ‘Yeh Kahan Aa Gaye Hum’ for ‘Silsila’ (1981), ‘Ek Ladki Ko Dekha’ for ‘1942: A Love Story’ (1994) and ‘Jashn-e-Bahara’ for ‘Jodhaa Akbar’ (2008), to name a few.

“It’s not that writers can’t write good songs. It’s that they are not getting an opportunity to write good songs. There are a number of reasons why songs have become forgettable. The tempo and beat have become very high. Most songs are in the background today. There is no lip sync anymore,” Akhtar told the top news agency.

Akhtar said that since the songs are no longer a part of the story, they lack personal feelings of sadness, happiness and heartbreak.

“Songs today are played in a generic situation. It’s playing in the background. Earlier, songs were used to capture a particular human emotion and would be part of the story. The character would lip sync, so it used to become a part of the drama. A song was like a scene,” he said.

According to the lyricist, most of the songs are set to high-tempo music, where the human mind gets only a fraction of a second to register the word.

“The tempo of songs has become so high and frantic that the voice loses its value. Words only go deep into your psyche or your hearing when there is some space for them. When you have a fraction of a second to register the word, if the tune is so fast, the words become irrelevant,” Akhtar noted.