AR Rahman takes offence to composers remixing old songs: ‘You can’t reimagine people’s work without their permission’

AR Rahman on song remixes

The trend of remixes isn’t new. It began in the late ’90s in Hindi music. But over the last few years, it has acquired a new form, with songs as new as 5-6 years old also getting remixes. Rahman seems to have taken offence to it.”You can’t take a song from a movie and use it in another movie six years later, saying you are reimagining it,” he told The Week. The composer added that a reimagined song can be used on social media but not commercially, in his opinion. “You can’t reimagine people’s work without their permission. You could post it on Instagram, but certainly not make it mainstream,” said the Oscar winner.

Rahman has seen several of his songs remade and remixed in recent times, the most prominent of which was Humma Humma (from the 1995 film Bombay), which was reimagined as The Humma Song by Tanishk Bagchi and Badshah in OK Jaanu (2017). Ironically, Rahman composed the score for OK Jaanu but was not involved in the remixing of his song.

AR Rahman on AI in music

But Rahman emphasised that AI in music was a much bigger issue. In the same interview, he called AI evil and said, “An even bigger evil is people misusing AI and not paying the composer even if they are borrowing his style. We need to bell this cat because it could lead to major ethical issues. People could lose jobs.”

Rahman’s most recent work includes the scores for Tamil film Raayan and Imtiaz Ali’s Amar Singh Chamkila, both of which were praised and had chartbuster songs. His upcoming work includes Chhava and Thug Life.