Rana's film upsets MJ fans

Daggubati's forthcoming film causes outrage as it's music is copied from Michael Jackson's Leave Me Alone

It was a sense of déjà vu for Michael Jackson fans when they heard the songs from the Rana Daggubati's film Nenu Naa Rakshasi. It didn't take long for many to recognise the similarity between the song Padithinammoo and Michael Jackson's Grammy award winning, Leave Me Alone from his album Bad. Music buffs are shocked by the blatant rip off.

Incidentally, the movie has two music directors - Vishwa and Rahman. Earlier Bollywood composer Bappi Lahiri was approached for the same but the 'Disco King' refused the offer, prompting the producers to then approach composer duo Vishal-Shekhar. But when that too fell through, they zeroed in on

local boys Vishwa-Rahman .

Madhura Sreedhar Reddy, owner of the audio firm which launched the CDs of the movie, admits that the song is a copy. "Most composers copy tunes and mould them to fit into our movies. But copying an MJ song is uncalled for. Though many in the interiors of Andhra Pradesh wouldn't have heard the number, it's unfair to copy his tunes. T-Town composers look out for 'references' instead of creating their own tunes," says Sreedhar.

Music director Vishwa who 'composed' the song, wrote the lyrics and even sang the number, confesses to the "similarity". He defends himself, saying, "I was inspired by MJ's tune and hence used it a bit. But I altered it a lot. Director Puri Jagannath and producer Bujji too like MJ and hence we used it. It's got a groovy melody and we've used the 'Mohana' ragam and 'Madhyamavati'. These beats suit the situational song."

But that's not all. Even as MJ fans were recovering from the rip-off shock, another track in this album Paapam Punyam turns out to be "inspired" by Scottish singer KT Tunstall's, Black Horse and the Cherry Tree.

While RaNa's publicity division obliges promotional queries, they refused to respond to this 'inspired' episode citing his busy schedule as a reason. While we were wondering if Tollywood would ever stop copying tunes, an angry fan writes to RaNa from the US, "Is it too much to ask for some original music? Papam Punyam is a total rip-off from Tunstall's album."

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