Breakfast Babble: I’m A Sardar Who Doesn’t Like Punjabi Songs And That’s Perfectly Normal

Breakfast Babble: ED’s own little space on the interwebs where we gather to discuss ideas and get pumped up for the day. We judge things too. Sometimes. Always. Whatever, call it catharsis and join in people.

Punjabi songs have the charm to become the life of a party, no matter how small or big the budget of the party is. But that’s pretty much it. Outside the ambiance of the party, these “urban” Punjabi songs make no sense to me.

This might come as a shock to some since I’m a Sikh, myself. No, I’m not some misguided pretentious millennial who wishes to sound cool by saying that his favorite musician is David Guetta but come to think about it, even the worst David Guetta song is miles away from your staple modern Punjabi tracks.

And it’s pretty simple to make a Punjabi song these days. The recipe includes: 1 singer, 1 pretty girl, 2 exotic cars (preferably a Lamborghini or Mustang), 3 shots of exotic locations with mediocre East Coast-Trap-West Coast mish-mash beat and a dash of lyrics. Bad lyrics. Okay, maybe a whole lot of bad lyrics.

Punjabi songs follow a simple and generic formula of production, recording and video development and they almost all talk about the same thing. And this is in no way similar to what the legends of Punajbi music such as Gurdas Maan, Harbhajan Mann, etc. have done over the years to epitomize Punjabi music and Punjabi folk songs, in particular.

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The fact that we are now grooving to songs like “Lagdi Lahore Di Aa, Jis Hisaab Naal Hassdi Aa”, which is basically saying that this girl looks like she belongs to Lahore because of the way she laughs is vehemently stupid and the immortal curse of being labeled as a “High Rated Gabru” whenever you do something mildly cool haunts me to my core.

It’s almost unfair to Punjabi music at large that artists choose to resort to a generic formula with no improvisation and incorporate a lot of rap/hip-hop undertones to their music in the name of “experimenting”, which is largely a way of saying, “I needed a famous rapper to boost my song’s reach”.

Add that to the terrible English verses they use in their songs, which are worse than a kindergarten student’s lingual prowess goes ahead and proves that in order to copy a Western culture, they essentially lose their own music’s uniqueness and identity.

But still, Sukhbir’s “Oh Ho Ho Ho” is the staple at every big fat Indian wedding and “Tenu Suit Suit Karda” will remain a cheesy one-liner Facebook comment for ages to come, it still appalls me that there hasn’t been a single Punjabi song which has received appreciation in modern times for being simple and effective like Diljit Dosanjh’s “El Sueno” (I believe that’s a decent song in his rather questionable discography).

So that’s my rant for today, folks! See you next Sunday for another Breakfast Babble!

Image Credits: Google Images

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