Classically Mild

Classically Mild is a semi-classical album sung by Sonu Nigam. The album was released by Sa Re Ga Ma on 11th February 2008. The album is Sonu Nigam’s first official attempt at classical music. The music director is Deepak Pandit and the lyricist is Ajay Jhingran. While it was the former’s first collaboration with Sonu Nigam, Ajay Jhingran had received the UP Governor’s Award for his first album, incidentally with Sonu Nigam, the Hindu devotional album Sanskaar. Santosh Mulekar helped Deepak Pandit in the music arrangement and Pramod Chandorkar did the mixing for the album at Sonu Nigam’s studio.

The album has 8 tracks, each exploring a different spectrum of emotions, including love, loneliness, praising women, patriotism as well as spiritualism. Sonu Nigam describes the album on the cover as his “attempt to remind himself how far away (he is) from being a singer”. He describes how hard he worked to achieve this level of perfection and how this was part of his efforts “to keep the student in (him) alive”. He thanked all those who contributed to making the music and ended by dedicating the album to his then-newborn son Nevaan as his “Dad’s gift of his honest labour” to him.

The song Soona Soona was the only one made into a video, starring Sonu Nigam himself, shown in the video in the avatar of a Greek god. There were plans for videos for some of the other songs but they never materialized. The album was a commercial and critical success although it was not played much on radio stations at the time.

1. Sochta Hoon Main has beautiful lyrics and this is a lovely fusion of jazz, blues and Indian instruments.

Questions about life. Sonu Nigam says:
It has my favorite question to the Cosmos. Whenever I’m alone, whenever I’m pondering over life, these are the feelings, these are the kind of thoughts that come into my mind and I’m still wondering what the world is all about.2. Bheege Bheege
It just personifies romance beauty and melody in a magical way. Odd music punctuated with melodious preludes and amazing transitions between notes.
3. Soona Soona
Enriched with beautiful and fine murkis and taans Sonu Nigam has made a statement. Sonu Nigam has Complete control over the vocals the rendering is flawless demonstrating amazing precision and mastery. The hard work shows in this one. A typical classical inspired fusion.
Sonu Nigam is a self-taught Musician, he never trained as a classical singer, Sonu Nigam says Soona Soona is my tribute to the classical music that I could not learn.
4. Suratiya Matwari
This is the melodious song it uses the Raag Kaafi, Sonu has mastered the nuances of music. Beautiful song.
5. Chhalki Chhalki
Another sweet melodious romantic number. The music and singing build up a perfect mood and one can visualize ambiance.
6. Dhanya Dhanya
This song is dedicated to women. It’s a tribute to all the women we know, This song gives you a different image of womankind, There is something very strange about this song.
7. Lamha Lamha
It is a song on positivity. This song propagates positivity, goodness around us and how each moment can be looked upon as to be cherished by all of us. So if you hear the entire song, the arrangement and everything, you feel as if you’ve woken up-it’s a song of awakening.
8. Ai Dil Mat Ro
The poetry in song by Ajay Jhingran is very good, The arrangement behind it, it's all oriental. The song portrays very specific loneliness, sad, nostalgic feeling. It essentially is a sad heartfelt expression of pain. This kind of music is quite rare.