AR Rahman Tamil Bracket: When Music and Memes Brought Twitter Together

When a young woman in Chennai came across a Twitter poll asking her to pick an AR Rahman song between the peppy ‘Elay Keechaan’ from Kadal (2013) and joyful ‘Madrasa Suthi Paaka Poren’ from May Maadham (1994), she instantly voted for the former and even went on to campaign for it. Because why not? It is one of the most popular AR Rahman albums in recent times, one that’s somewhere at the top of the playlist even after a decade of release. But later, when she had a conversation with her mother about the songs, her mother strongly sided with ‘Madrasa Suthi Paaka Poren’. While it was just an old single for the daughter, the song rekindled sweet memories for the mother. In the late 90s, when she had just moved to Chennai after her marriage, the song was the guiding light, something that helped her embrace the madness of the city and her new life with love and hope. When the daughter heard the song after the conversation, the lyrics and beats hit a different note, and she ended up campaigning against her own campaign. 

That’s what the bracket was all about, Ajai Ramana, Srilakshmi Indrasenan (aka Sri) and Abinaya Swaminathan, the moderators/creators of the ARR Tamil bracket on Twitter, tell us. The aim of the exercise was to make people rediscover Rahman’s magical beats and create new memories as much as it was about picking the ultimate ARR song. “If we had just dropped a playlist of 256 songs or even asked influencers to share those, it wouldn't have encouraged people to listen to the songs, discuss them or hark back to some wonderful moments. Instead, when we did a whole bracket, people got to do all of these,” says Abinaya (aka Abi). 

For the uninitiated, the ARR bracket was a Twitter poll in which 256 songs competed for the crown. “The voting happened in pairs. Say we take 16 songs for a day. It will be divided into 8 pairs and when the voting ends, we will have 8 winners. The bracket was divided into six rounds. We had 128 songs in the first round, and the winning 64 songs were paired with a new set of 64 songs in the next round. And the same followed for the third round before we got to the top 64. Round 5 had the top 32 songs, and round 6 had the top 16 followed by quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals,” says Ajai Ramana, known as the Excel guru of the group. 

Before we get into the deets, what made Abi, Sri and Ajai start this in the first place? It was again a pair of AR Rahman songs. All three of them were actively campaigning and voting for the AR Rahman Hindi bracket, which was held earlier this year. When ‘Telephone Dhoon Mein’ (Indian, 2001) was pitted against ‘Chanda Re Chanda Re’ (Minsara Kanavu, 1997), Abi was unable to choose between the both. But Sri was sure that she would choose the former. This led to them discussing the whys and hows of it, and they suddenly wondered what if the same pitting happened in Tamil, (i.e.) what if ‘Telephone Manipol’ was pitted against ‘Vennilave Vennilave’? We didn’t get an answer for that, but what we did get is an entire bracket for Tamil songs.

“Choosing 256 songs was difficult. But we decided to do the bracket in March and we had good two months to do the seeding,” says Sri. Their basic criteria included that the dubbed songs from Hindi cinema would not be included and the selected songs would be spread across different decades and genres. "While Aayutha Ezhuthu (2004) or Raavanan (2010) would make the cut, Dil Se (1998) or Guru (2007) wouldn’t.” This is mainly because many people already got to discover these songs through the Hindi bracket. “Over the next two months, we made a master playlist and started listening to all the songs from his discography that fit the bill.” Later, they started to pick songs that they would definitely choose. “For instance, in our heart, we know that ‘Pudhu Vellai Mazhai’ (Roja, 1992) is definitely going to make the cut. We started adding these to an Excel sheet. Apart from the classic songs, we also wanted enough melodies, bops and folk representations from different years. We also wanted to include songs that many were not familiar with, especially on social media. For example, ‘Yaarum Illa Thani Araiyil’ from Kaaviya Thalivan (2014) or even ‘Idhayam’ from Kochadaiyan (2014) may not be seen in a lot of reels. So we wanted to take such songs to the people.”

While they agreed on 200-210 songs, choosing the next 50-odd songs proved to be demanding. Their main strategy was to convince one another by explaining why they think that song is underrated and by making others listen to the song. Ajai reminisces, “We decided on 254 songs and we needed two more. I had a work call to attend, and meanwhile, they selected two songs and finished the list. But during the call, I suddenly realised that I wanted to include ‘Enga Pona Rasa’ from Maryan (2013). So once the call ended, I spoke to them for at least another half an hour. I sent them multiple music covers and even the making video, before finally convincing them.” But he felt sad that another song that he badly wanted to include did not make the cut. It was ‘Nee Singam Dhan’ from Pathu Thala (2023). “But Chennai Super Kings covered it for me,” Ajai laughs (The DJ in Chepauk Stadium played the song every time MS Dhoni walked out to bat). 

One factor that majorly affects any Twitter bracket’s outcome is the songs that are paired. Say ‘Mukkala’ and ‘Urvasi’ (the songs that made it to the finals) were pitted against each other in the very first round. The finals would have been very different, right? To ensure the pairing was spot on and unbiased, the trio divided the songs into groups of 16s and 32s and put them in a randomiser tool which would randomly create pairs. “Until the night before, we were not aware how the songs will be paired the next day,” says Ajai. And this sometimes resulted in some crazy pairs. For instance, the romantic melody ‘Udhaya Udhaya’ was pitted against the peppy fun ‘Sonia Sonia’. “This was one of the first times we had songs from different genres paired together,” says Sri. 

“The banters caused by such pairings are some of my favourite memories from the bracket. For instance, when ‘Udaya’ and ‘Sonia’ were paired, both of which were my favourite songs, Abi and Ajai campaigned for different songs and were getting on my nerves. I also made a meme referring to a scene from Panchathanthiram during this. Similarly, there were best friends who bantered when ‘Kannukul Kannai Veithu’ from Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa and ‘Konjum Mainaakkale’ from Kandukondain Kandukondain (2000) were pitted against each other. One of them who had just came out of a situationship wanted to listen to the former and feel sad, while the other asserted that someone who came out of a situationship should listen to the latter which is filled with hope and shows one to move on and be happy. I also saw couples arguing and campaigning, trying to convince each other,” an elated Sri recalls.

From averaging two thousand votes per poll, the bracket reached a lot of people, touching around ten thousand votes on average during the last few rounds. And Ajai asserts that the key takeaways are the writeups by fellow Twitter users. He says, “During the top 32, we had asked people to send short essays on their favourite songs. For instance, in a writeup on ‘Mazhai Thuli’, a person described how she sought motivation from the song while preparing for her UPSC examinations. While everyone around climbed up the ladders, the person felt stuck but the music kept her going.” As for Abi, she was overjoyed when her favourite numbers like ‘Hello Mr Ethirkatchi’ (Iruvar, 1997) or ‘Theekuruvi’ (Kangalal Kaidhu Sei, 2004) managed to win despite being pitted against popular songs like ‘Nenje Ezhu’ (Maryan) and ‘Taxi Taxi’ (Sakkarakatti, 2008), with many people campaigning for these underrated numbers.

Unlike the Hindi bracket, where everyone knew from Day 1 that ‘Chaiya Chaiya’ was going to win, the Tamil bracket saw neck-to-neck pairings most of the time. Even songs like ‘Hosanna’ (Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa, 2010) or ‘Shakalaka Baby’ (Mudhalvan, 1999), which were initially considered as the ‘Chaiya Chaiya’ of Tamil, soon lost to their counterparts. And on the day of finals, it was a frisky battle between two 90s songs — ‘Mukkala Mukkabala’ and ‘Urvasi Urvasi’ — from the same film, Kadhalan (1994). But until the last minute, no one could predict the winner. “There were a lot of close battles throughout the bracket. Even during the finals, until the last minute, ‘Mukkala’ was leading. I had gone to wash some vegetables, and when I was back, ‘Urvasi’ had won,” Sri recollects. “‘Mukkala’ lost by only 12 votes.”

Looking back, it made sense that ‘Urvasi Urvasi’ won, remarks Abi. “We had participation from people belonging to other states as well. So unlike the Tamil-ish songs like ‘Mazhai Thuli’ (Sangamam, 1999), ‘Veerapandi Kotayyile’ (Thiruda Thiruda, 1993), or ‘Enna Solla Pogirai’ (Kandukondain Kandukondain, 2000), which were popular only in the Tamil diaspora, people would obviously vote for a song like ‘Urvasi Urvasi’ which is one of those songs that transcended languages.” 

Of course, Twitter interactions without negative comments and abuses are of the utopian world. Even though they were more than prepared, thanks to the help and warnings from the Hindi bracket-ers, some things did go out of hand. When fellow voters were also abused by certain fan groups, without the mass block option in the new Twitter version, the moderators had to remove a few songs from the bracket. All said and done, many enjoyed voting for their favourite numbers. Besides the songs, it is the eventful campaigning that went behind every song that voters will remember, Sri says.

After all, such brackets and campaigning are also what brought them together and led many people to discover some hidden gems of AR Rahman. Like the moderators, the bracket helped many find people with similar musical tastes. And they teamed up to campaign, creating multiple groups like the Fanaatics (fans of ‘Fanaa’ from Aayutha Ezhuthu), Sangamam Sangam (fans of ‘Mazhai Thuli…Mannil Sangamam’), Raavanan Cells, ThirudaARRS (Thiruda Thiruda fans), Alaicels (Alaipaayuthey fans), etc. 

Sri says, “The bracket helped us build friendships and a whole community together. Many people collaborated over song covers, memes, and video edits. People also did dance covers for songs. As the bracket ended, what we take forward is the community we have built.” But don’t worry. Ajai immediately quips, “We have a few brackets going on for now. And a bigger bracket is in the offing. We have an Ilaiyaraaja bracket coming up in July.”