A path breaking venture was created when Roja hit the stands and ARR’s outstanding abilities came to the limelight due to another creative genius - Mani Ratnam. To add further spice, one of the best lyricists of all times Gulzar joined the duo and gave what all of us aspired for - high quality rendition in Dil Se. Till date, I consider Dil Se as the best ARR album of all time in Hindi. Now, when the trio combine together, obviously expectations are such that it exceeds even the natural spatial boundaries. Guru has to come out with something ultra special to quench the musical thirst of ARR fans.
I am not going to get into the details of the songs since there are already some nice reviews on Mouthshut explaining every minute detail of every song. The songs are scanned to a beat, and the pros and cons of the musical has been analysed. From my perspective, Guru is a typical ARR musical with some outstanding orchestra. For me, Jaage Hain is easily the song of the album, what with its wonderful orchestra and easy pace. The way the song moves up and down maintaining its sync and giving a tranquil feeling to the listeners is certainly the highlight of the album. People may classify this song as slow, but the way the music has been etched for this song, it can easily be the song of the year. There is another aspect of ARR music which people must understand. When you are listening to ARR music for the first time, you can almost throw the CD to the trash can. But it is only when you give a second or third hearing that you begin to realise the beauty of his composition. Guru impressed me the first time. Jaage Hain is kind of a theme song and I feel that this might be regular fillers in the movie.
Tere Bina is another superlative composition from the maestro. ARR is certainly lending his voice to some special songs, and the end product has been highly successful. The dedication to Nusrat Fateh Ali cannot be done in a better way.
Nannare Nannare Nannare...Na Na re by Shreya Goshal is beautiful. Barso Re strikes the right chords with the listeners with a type of folk song. This should easily classify as one of the top songs of the album. Ay Hairathe from Hariharan is good with special touches coinciding with the Tere Bina song.
The other songs are maybe ordinary and did not catch much of my attention. But the bottomline is simple. You must run to the nearest CD store and grab a copy of Guru. These songs are not worth listening even on mp3s. This special musical obviously requires the highest encoding possible to get the real feel of ARR music. The songs just keep growing on you like any other ARR musical and I am sure this is going to be a musical treat for ARR fans.