“Breathless” by Shankar Mahadevan
The title of this song (“Breathless”) is actually an acknowledgement of its shtick, where the vocalist seems – even if doing so is physically impossible – not to take a single breath while reciting the entirety of the lyrics.
The lyrics are rendered in Hindi. There currently doesn’t appear to be an official English translation of “Breathless” readily available besides for one found via a YouTube lyric video. So analyzing this song is already challenging enough as is. On top of the fact that, as translated, the wording is heavily poetic.
But that noted, regardless of how symbolic the lyrics to a particular track may be, generally speaking there’s only so many different categories of songs floating about. And this is in fact a love song. It reads as if it is entirely dedicated to the vocalist celebrating being smitten by the addressee (and apparently vice versa).
All things considered, doing so is in fact an impressive feat, i.e. for a song to be able to firmly stick to a singular topic throughout its entire length. The vocalist is able to achieve this going basically because what we’re dealing with here is a collection of unique, quality metaphors. And these metaphors all point to, once again, him being in love.
You’re My Soul Mate
Put more specifically, from a lyrical perspective this may be the most-effective track we’ve ever come across in terms of the vocalist relaying his belief that the addressee is indeed his soul mate. He starts off by noting how his existence, if you will, has been holistically edified by her presence. He concludes by putting forth that the two of them were fated to be together. In his eyes, they were destined to be together, even from birth.
So it’s as if up until this point, let’s say that the vocalist has heard a fair share of love songs himself. So he knew that being smitten, ideologically, is supposed to be some type of life-changing experience. But now that he is actually going through it himself via his relationship with the addressee, Shankar has come to realize that yes, truly being in love is even better than advertised.
Shankar Mahadevan
Shankar Mahadevan is a singer from India. He has been in the game since the mid-1990s. He released “Breathless” in 1998. The song was so popular it quickly became his breakthrough song.
India is a country in which, as you probably already know, practically every actor is required to sing (or at least lip sync). Furthermore, most hit songs are associated with movies. However, to note, Shankar doesn’t appear to be much of an actor.
In fact this piece served as the title track to his second LP. The said LP was named Best Non-Film Album during the Screen Awards of 1998.
The said project stands as Mahadevan’s most-recent studio album. This is because since then he has been primarily involved in composing movie soundtracks and has excelled in that regard.
“Breathless”
The music video to “Breathless” was directed by the sibling team made up of the following:
- Farhan Akhtar
- Zoya Akhtar
To note both Farhan and Zoya are the children of Javed Akhtar, the lyricist behind this song.
Mahadevan came out with a remix of “Breathless” in 2018. The remix was released in recognition of the achievements of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Mahadevan produced this track. He composed the tune, by his own account, while in a taxi.
