Karwaan singer Prateek Kuhad decodes why Bollywood has lost melody [Exclusive]

Let's face it, Bollywood music has hit rock bottom. Gone are the days when songs were soothing to the ears. Today's music has only two popular trends: renditions and lifting from other industries.

However, August has sprinkled some good music in form of Karwaan. The movie's album holds some melodious tunes sung by various artists, including Prateek Kuhad. Two of his compositions for the movie, Kadam and Saansein, are giving music lovers a euphonious break from unwelcomed songs.

Ask him why the music industry seems to have lost the concept of melody, Kuhad tells International Business Times India that the quality of lyrics has deteriorated.

"Personally, more than the melody, the quality of lyrics has deteriorated a lot compared to Indian film music from the 50s/60s. It's hard to say whether it's the audience or the music producers (that has changed)," he told IBT.

"I think the audience was also restricted to a certain degree. For a long time, only classic forms of music consumption existed such as radio and television. With streaming becoming popular that's changing and music distribution networks are no longer only for big labels with deep pockets," he added.

"Any musician can sign up and put their music out there, which really democratises the industry, so to speak, and also gives listeners the chance to explore all kinds of songs. I think going forward this will change the paradigm of music consumption in this country quite drastically – and in turn only improve the quality of songwriting overall," he further explains.

Discussing renditions, the musician added, "I think if it is done well it can be nice, but doing it for the sake of doing it is a bit unnecessary."

But there is more to him than just Karwaan lately. Kuhad recently rolled out a new album titled cold/mess and in no time, it topped the iTunes' India chart.

Sharing details about the songs from the album, he said, "cold/mess is a collection of fragments and emotions from my life over the past three years. It ends up forming a fairly structured narrative because it speaks primarily about the last serious relationship that I was in."

The songster has also included a new version of his popular song 100 Words in the album. Explaining why he added a few more musical elements to the otherwise acoustic original, he shared, "That was a live video we did, so it was supposed to be simple and solo. In the studio, you want to make the song the best you can. That being said, I've still kept the 100 words fairly stripped down, it's just got a few more elements like piano and a really simple kick drum to make it shine a bit more!"

Kuhad has come miles from when his first song released. He had crooned Kho Gaye Hum Kahan for Baar Baar Dekho, released four albums and earned a slew of international accolades. However, he says that he rarely looks back at his journey.

"It's been about five years since Raat Raazi! So it has been quite a while. It's hard to really say, you just kinda go with it, you know. I'm also not the kind of person that looks back at the past too much – so I would rarely look back at the 'journey'."