‘Credit De Do Yaar’ : A Bollywood Lyricist’s Plea
Listening to music, be it from any genre, language or country isn’t an ordeal anymore. No more do we have to run to the nearest music store to buy physical copies (CDs, cassettes) of the latest music albums or old favourites. It’s only a click away. Streaming platforms have changed the landscape of music-listening altogether. Both independent artists and big record labels have shifted to this trend of directly releasing new music on digital streaming platforms. However, if we look at the state of Bollywood music, things aren’t that smooth for lyricists in particular. We do remember the names of our favourite singers and music directors, but how often do we remember the lyricists? Unlike streaming platforms like Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn and many more, the YouTube channels of big record labels mostly mention the lyricists along with the singers and music directors, but even then, slip-ups happen. In a recent video published on eminent lyricist, screenwriter and stand-up comic, Varun Grover’s YouTube channel, 15 lyricists from the Hindi film industry demanded that they receive proper credit for their work on music streaming platforms and YouTube channels.
“Currently, no music streaming apps/platforms have any algorithm of prominently displaying lyrics credits or making a song searchable by the lyrics writer’s name. On official YouTube channels of almost every big music company, hundreds of song videos have wrong or missing credits of lyrics writers. Be it legends like Sahir saab, Shailendra saab, Gulzar saab, Javed Akhtar saab, Anand Bakshi saab, Sameer saab or contemporary writers like Puneet Sharma, Abhiruchi Chand and others — this culture of apathy and erasure runs across generations. Respect is all we desire.”
Lyricist Shailender Singh Sodhi, commonly known as Shellee, popular for his work on films like Dev D, Udta Punjab, Manmarziyan and many more, recently spoke to the Hindustan Times highlighting the same issue.
“There’s a rule: if the name is missing, the royalties from the song won’t come to you, be it YouTube or music apps. Unlike abroad, we don’t have the rights. These music apps have a different algorithm. If we are given our credits, we will start getting the royalty. But what about the royalties of the past? We don’t do any gigs or concerts like singers, who get paid Rs 40 lakhs sometimes. We just get paid peanuts once, and there are negotiations, and nothing after that. Then we have to resort to doing other things like dialogue and script writing to earn extra moolah,” says Shailender.
Also, there are other ways in which the lyricists don’t receive their due credit. There are many instances of lyricists being wrongly credited in Bollywood. One of the most recent incidents that created a massive uproar was rapper Baadshah’s infamous re-working of the famous Bengali folk song, ‘Boroloker Biti Lo’ originally written by Ratan Kahar, an 85-year old folk artist based in Birbhum. It wouldn’t have made such a fuss had it been an official remake. Instead, there was and still is no mention of the original songwriter anywhere. The whole fiasco was put to a full stop when Baadshah merely paid a lump sum of money to Ratan Kahar.
This thing isn’t new. Long time ago, a similar incident occurred in 1968. The iconic song ‘Ek Chatur Naar’ from the classic film Padosan was originally not a song by Manna Dey and Kishore Kumar. The original lyrics were written by Kavi Pradeep for an older song sung by Ashok Kumar in the movie Jhoola that came out in 1941. However, the credit for the lyrics was solely given to Rajendra Krishan.
With the onslaught of tasteless remakes, the probability of crediting the original lyricists has lessened considerably. For example, on the YouTube channel of T-Series, the credit for the lyrics of last year’s smash-hit remake of ‘Dilbar’ featured in the film Satyameva Jayate was wholly given to Shabbir Ahmed without even a passing mention of Sameer.
Varun Grover has also mentioned in a series of tweets about how he and composer Sagar Desai weren’t credited for the film Ankhon Dekhi. After ‘repeated requests’ the record label released the music online, but without giving credit to the lyricist.
Swanand Kirkire recently shared screenshots from the album of Dil Bechara streaming on Spotify.
“There”s no tradition of crediting the lyricists on this music app. Only the thumbnail, which the producer has provided has a mention, but once you click, only the composer and singers are credited. They have also embedded the lyrics, but not the name of the lyricist,” Kirkire said.
A YouTuber has compiled a list of Hindi songs on the platform, where official channels of music studios haven’t/wrongly credited the lyricists.
Apart from this, there’s also an abysmal sex ratio if we consider recent popular female lyricists in Bollywood. The names of Kausar Munir , Abhiruchi Chand and Anvita Dutt Guptan come to mind, but that’s it.
Even in such a tumultuous situation, some lyricists are firm in their resolve to show how to credit lyricists the right way. Varun Grover reached out to the descendants and publishers of the late Hindi poet Dushyant Kumar just for their permission to use two lines from his poem in the song ‘Tu Kisi Rail Si’ featured in the 2015 film, Masaan. Dushyant Kumar is rightfully credited in the official video of the song published from the YouTube channel of Zee Music Company.
It’s not that difficult to do just the bare minimum. The ‘unsung’ heroes of the music industry are just asking for a simple credit.
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