Counting SPB's songs [ was Re: G songs with A.M. Raja ]
Dev Mannemela (devm@spimageworks.com)
Thu, 22 Feb 1996 18:48:09 -0800
On Feb 12, 7:42pm, Sreenivas Paruchuri wrote:
>
> [Aside: Why do the Indian film journalists/fans exaggerate? Every MD had
> done more than 100 films, every singer had sung more than 10,000, .......
> Recently Dev Mannemela in his article on SPB mentioned that S. P.
> Balasubrahmanyam sang >26,000 songs. I think in a later followup he tried to
> prove that SPB 'd have sung so many songs. Unfortunately I did n't save it.
> I hope he is still subscribing to this list, and 'd answer the question.]
>
That 26,000 number was from the article I posted on the net i.e
I didn't come up with it, I just copied the article from a newspaper
verbatim. Either that was the interviewer's guess or it is from
SPB himself..
Here is my rmim reply about the 26,000 number..
Does it seem that far-fetched to you?
In article <59.8505.6956@windmill.com>,
Surjit Singh <surjit.singh@windmill.com> wrote:
>
>DM> He has sung some 26,000 songs to date and has recorded songs in Tulu,
>DM> Oriya and Bengali languages also.
>
>I don't know. Even combining all the languages, 26000 sounds a bit much.
>Poor Mukesh sang from 1941 to 1982 in many languages,
>and he could manage only a sum total of 994 songs.
>
>I wonder if this number, 26000, is from an actual listing of his songs,
>or just a guess based on implausible assumptions.
The article doesn't say anything about where they got the number from.
We could try some little guess work here:
Telugu:
His pre-70s count is probably insignificant. He shared the spotlight
with other singers till late 70s and from then onwards he totally monopolised
the telugu industry.
1981-1995: Assuming an conservative average of 100 films per year
and SPB singing 5 songs in 95% of them, count = 15 * 95 * 5 = 7,125.
and that is not including movies dubbed from other languages.
again assuming that an average of 50 films were dubbed into telugu
and SPB singing 5 songs in 75% of them, count += 15 * 37.5 * 5 ;
you got ~10,000 right there.
add to that this pre 1980 telugu stuff and
all his tamil songs (from 1970 on) where he did sing a substantial
number of songs, thought he didn't monopolize and
all his kannada songs in the same period
plus his 400 odd hindi songs..
the count of 26,000 doesn't seem that far fetched. does it?
dev
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Dev Mannemela devm@spimageworks.com
Software Engineer (310) 280-8699 (O)
Sony Pictures Imageworks (310) 641-1614 (H)