A single that looks at TV news through a satirical lens

Like all of us, musician

Dheerendra Doss

makes certain observations and has an opinion on them. But unlike many, he has a quirky bent of mind, which results in music that not just sounds good, but manages to get a laugh out of you, even while singing about serious topics. His latest video, and an animation one at that, which released recently, is a satire on

TV

news channels. And while one may think that the song, titled

The Nation Wants to Know

, is about one popular TV personality, Dheerendra stresses that was never his intention. “The video speaks about an entity and is not meant to be personal. It does revolve around one character, but it doesn’t mean that this character exists; it’s an alternate depiction of actions, which is what I feel today’s TV media has taken. Earlier, news was about just plainly stating facts, but today, it’s highly opinionated and high on energy, which doesn’t give viewers the time to think for themselves. And that’s what my song is about,” he says.

But why an animation video? “This track was actually made back in 2015 and I thought that it would be a regular video. I even had a detailed storyboard in place, but somehow never got the time and resources to actuate it. Praveen (Jude Brown, the animator) sent me his work on social media and I immediately got in touch with him. With animation, you can go beyond reality, and that’s what we have done. Praveen took a good six months to finish it since he was doing it in his free time and has done a fabulous job,” he says.

On how the concept came about, Dheerendra says lyricist Aarti Shetty penned the lyrics in 2015, which was inspired by the noise (referring to the highly energetic and loud news bulletins on TV) that took over her drawing room every evening. She then gave the lyrics to Dheerendra to make a song out of it. "The concept and lyrics are hers," he says.

The song is in Hindi and being a pucca

Jayanagar

boy, Dheerendra admits that his Hindi is not very good. Ask him what inspired him to sing and produce a Hindi track, and he says, “I think that it reaches a national audience. I could have done it in English or

Kannada

, but I think that would narrow the audience. This song is a part of the many others that I will be releasing this year, which will be in Hindi as well as Kannada. Each song is on a different topic.”

Considering the content, what kind of reactions is Dheerendra expecting to receive? “I think that I’m going to get either nasty reactions or people will completely endorse even more than what I intend to say; I’m not going to get anything in between. My intention for it is to reach the right people and for the song to be taken in the right spirit. I don’t want to hurt anyone with it. At the end of the day, it’s just music, a piece of art that is not meant to make a point. It’s merely an observation; if people have the right to voice their opinion in public, then this is one small voice, that’s all,” the singer, composer, producer and director signs off.

Watch the song here: