Movie Music Monday: Priyanka Chopra gets "Exotic" with Pitbull

While they certainly are enjoyable listens and show genuine musical potential, Bollywood superstar Priyanka Chopra's first two singles did come with a twinge of disappointment. If "In My City" showed a ready-to-go, mass appeal pop sensibility, and "Erase" showed a refreshing willingness to experiment with harder, more underground beats and textures, what was missing was a dash of her unique selling point as far as the American music market is concerned: a taste of authentic Indian spice. Thankfully, the aptly named "Exotic" not only finally incorporates South Asian rhythms and Hindi lyrics, but also reflects and encapsulates why I've always gravitated and connected so strongly with Indian film music: how it so effortlessly fuses a veritable world of sounds into a seamless and distinctive whole. In addition to Indian sounds and Western dance pop, the track also gets a strong infusion of hip-hop courtesy of Pitbull, who gets a "featuring" credit though the vocal split between him and Chopra is more akin to a 50/50 duet. That said, the voice, literally and figuratively, that dominates is Chopra's, and if the lyrics remain very much in the less-than-profound, merely functional pop realm, that this track finds her carving out a distinctly Desi-honoring musical identity will go a long way toward winning over doubters in her home country.

Buy Priyanka Chopra and Pitbull's "Exotic" single here.
Buy The Chainsmokers and Priyanka Chopra's "Erase" single here.
Buy Priyanka Chopra and will.i.am's "In My City" single here.

Movie Music Monday: Priyanka Chopra's indelible "Erase"

While her worldwide legion of fans still await the premiere of the music video for her debut single, the NFL-adopted "In My City," Bollywood superstar Priyanka Chopra has quietly released a follow-up, officially credited to New York-based producers/DJ duo The Chainsmokers. As that credit would suggest, "Erase" is, like her first release, a dance single, but the similarities pretty much begin and end there, for if "In My City" fell squarely in the more pop/mainstream end of the spectrum, "Erase" occupies a darker, harder-edged underground club vibe--and the more aggressive and adventurous production also bleeds into Chopra's vocal performance. As she effortlessly glides between a slinky, sensual purr on the verses to an urgent, climactic wail as The Chainsmokers' beats pulsate and percolate to an epic electronica explosion, Chopra displays a vocal abandon akin to the all-in fearlessness she routinely displays in her acting roles--a sense of liberation and exhilaration that is nowhere in evidence in her fun but rather safe debut single. While "In My City" did make me initially interested in what Chopra does as a recording artist, "Erase" makes me more invested in the greater potential of how she develops musically as she experiments and fuses with sounds that lie more on the fringes. (Now, more than ever, I am clamoring for a collaboration, both in film and in music, between Chopra and Driis/7Wallace...)

Buy The Chainsmokers and Priyanka Chopra's "Erase" single here.
Buy Priyanka Chopra and will.i.am's "In My City" single here.

Movie Music Monday: Priyanka Chopra crosses over with "In My City"

Being one of the most versatile and adaptable actresses working in Bollywood today, it came as no surprise to learn that Priyanka Chopra, who can currently in cinemas delivering one of her best-yet performances in Barfi!, is the next big Hindi film star to make a major crossover move into Hollywood. What is surprising, however, is the manner in which she's making the transition into the Western entertainment world: as a music artist. Although she works in the lip-sync-to-playback-singer world of Indian cinema, she had already proven her own more than capable vocal chops in her screen debut in 2002's Tamil language film Thamizhan, where she had the rare task of providing her own song vocals; and on a more widespread but still fairly under-the-radar scale in 2004's Temptation concert tour of Bollywood stars, where she rather presciently lent her voice to a cover of an American pop hit, Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle." Now, under the aegis of Universal Music Group, Desi Hits, and no less of a music industry heavyweight in Interscope Records' Jimmy Iovine, Chopra makes her debut single splash with the RedOne-produced "In My City", and not for nothing has it been selected as this season's theme for NFL Network's Thursday Night Football. Featuring will.i.am, the song is the type of rousing, clap-and-sing-along dance pop anthem designed to be played in stadiums during sporting events, with the chorus's closing lines "You ain't never had a party/'Til you come to a party/In my city" tailor-made to boost home team pride.

Oddly enough, the song has been met with somewhat of a tepid reaction in India, with the tune commonly chided for its admittedly banal lyrical content, which points up an interesting pop-cultural divide between India and America, if not the western world in general. With music and lyrics so firmly entrenched in storytelling tradition--most especially in the leading entertainment and art form that is film--in India, local audiences are trained to pay closer attention to lyrics and their meaning. (Not for nothing do you see the names of lyricists pushed as a selling point on movie posters, trailers, and TV spots.) This, of course, comes in stark contrast to the Western pop music world, where the actual words being sung are distinctly secondary to a catchy melodic hook or, most especially in recent years, tight beats and slick production. For what it's supposed to be as a potential pop earworm and an arena anthem, the lyrics of "In My City" are perfectly, harmlessly, functional, serving their purpose in being easy to learn and, especially after repeated listens, hard to resist singing along with--which are the first steps toward becoming a hit single on the charts.

Buy Priyanka Chopra's "In My City" single here.