After churning out hit Bengali songs by the dozens in his eight-year career as a singer-songwriter, Anupam Roy is turning to English music. He has found an able compatriot in the guitar god of Kolkata – Amyt Datta – and two of their songs are ready for release. The music videos of the songs, Girl in a Bookstore
and Regular Guy, have already been shot, where the two are seen flirting with Kolkata in different ways.
“When I was in college, I would often pen lyrics in English. But after graduation, I consciously decided to concentrate on Bengali songs, instead of dabbling in both. But over the past five-six years, I often came up with tunes that I felt were best-suited for English songs. Instead of forcefully putting in Bengali words, I let the lyrics come to me naturally. I realised I have already composed a good 15 songs,” said Anupam. After the Nirbhaya incident in Delhi in 2012, Anupam had composed an English song, Second Sex, which eventually made it to YouTube. “But it was not for a commercial purpose. At that time, it was more about expressing my feelings through music,” he said.
Anupam, who, by his own admission, was not confident about his English songs, met Amyt with a dozen songs. “We had a budget for recording only two; Amytda chose them from the lot. We eventually made the music videos and one of the songs will release this week,” added Anupam.
Girl in a Bookstore is a romantic song about a young man who comes across a girl in a bookstore; he instantly falls for the cute, nerdy bookworm. The opening lines go like: ‘Girl in a bookstore, what’s she reading?/ Can’t be so sure!/ Checking up my playlist/ Will she like it if I play her some bright songs?’. The other song, Regular Guy, is about soul-searching and goes like, ‘I’m not a saint, I’m not a sinner/ I don’t want to lose but I’m not a winner/ That’s how I live, that’s how I die/ I’m just a regular guy’.
Amyt, who arranged the songs, explained, “Anupam rang me up one day to talk about the songs. When I first heard the acoustic guitar songs, I liked the vibe. A Bengali singer rendering an English song is not my cup of tea, but these songs were different; they had authenticity in them. Anupam asked me to arrange, produce and play in them. I could feel the potential of the songs when they were recorded and eventually put in my parts and also, liked the mix. They are in the pop territory and what I adored were the simple storylines. The videos will see us wandering around town.”
While Sandipan Parial has played the drums in the songs, Kaustav Biswas accompanied the music team on bass guitar. |Source: TOI