There were singers like Krishna Chandran (e.g. movie Kozhi Koovuthu with S. Janaki) and Jaya Chandran. Where are these guys? Stopped singing? Gone into oblivion? Jaya Chandran sang for couple of Kannada movies also as he was favorite for director Puttanna Kanagal.

KM

We can divide the film singing trends by BR and AR.

BR stands for Before Rahman and AR for After Rahman.

Music directors like M.S.Vishwanathan and Illaiyaraja were very restricitive in giving chances to new singers. They were only using old and tested singers. People like Yesudas, Chitra, Malayasia Vasudevan had a very tough time breaking into the music industry. The decision of who would sing for them was decided by heroes like MGR and Sivaji Ganesan.

In hindi Lata Mangeshkar ruled the industry and destroyed the careers of many of budding singers including her own sister Asha Bhonsle.


After ARR came into the scene he opened and made it possible for anybody to get an opportunity and the scene is now flooded with so many of them.

Now a days with people like Yuvan Shankar Raja he uses 3 to 4 singers to sing a song and then fuses their voices together so that it is a fusion of their voices and of no separate identity.

Another trend happening now is that with people like Sukhivender Singh, Madhushree or Udit narayan, they sing the first stanza while another singer does the rest of the song or somebody else voice is fused into their voice as their diction is very poor.

The only odd one out is Shreya Ghoshal whose diction is perfect.

Today the market is flooded with singers like KK, Naresh Iyer, Vijay Yesudas, Bombay Jayashree, even new composer Vijay Antony sings by himself.

If you see any new music chart every song will have 3 to 4 names for each song.

Back to your question Jaya chandran sings occasionally in malayalam as youngsters like Srinivasan's son have taken over the scene, while Krishna Chandran are singing the Track(after the music is recorded some one sings the track and then the main singer sings over the recorded track & many times the track singer does a better job than the lead singer who is forced on by the producer/director).

In a way it is good that the market has opened up and many of the singers have become"one hit wonders" while sometimes the standard for singing has been diluted.

Classic case Sriram Parthasarathy who the national award for best singer for Gajini-tamil is no where to be seen just like Unnikrishnan.

But many of the current trend singers sing in many languages like hindi, tamil, malayalam, Kannada, haryanvi, bhojpuri and also have a back up career singing ghazals, carnatic or hindustani music. Many others are professionals as Chartered Accountants, SW engineers or even doctors and go back to their careers after their 5 minute of fame.

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Sunny Leone a true Canadian DESI now back in India !.

Very true. Good analysis.

Cheers.

Excellent analysis from VM.

Though the AR era has opened the doors to many new comers, it seems at the same time the quality of music has deteriorated. Instead of the singer dominating the song, it is the technology taking over the music. It looks like the trend is continuing in other languages as well like Telugu, Kannada, Hindi etc.