Why this 'kolaveri' goes national

Why This Kolaveri Di' Interview With Dhanush
Dhanush with one #kolaveri vid has outdone the publicity SRK managed to build over 3 months for Ra.One," says a tweet, one of the many that had kept 'kolaveri' on the top of the Twitter trending list.

Such has been the buzz around a song from 3, a forthcoming Tamil film. The latest viral video doing the rounds seems to have piqued the curiosity of everyone - from your neighbourhood chai-annan/walah to the elderly walking in the park, from the IIT campuses to office cooler.

On Tuesday, this song was the most recommended on YouTube's music section. It stood third in the global music list giving a tough time to Lady Gaga. Around 6, 95,599 people shared it on Facebook.

Interestingly, around 1.5 million people had watched this on youtube in four days, the largest song ever in India. An RJ in an FM station in Chennai says, "Almost 90% of people who called me today requested me to play this song. Never have I seen such requests pouring in." Similarly radio stations in Mumbai and other metros also had similar rquests on Tuesday after the virus started spreading. Even Anand Mahindra, vice chairman and MD of Mahindra Group tweeted about how cool the new song was. "And going viral in India is now #KolaViral," he tweeted.

Try making sense of the lyrics and you will hit a firewall. It is just another in the series of recent nonsense songs that have topped the Tamil charts and has been copied into other languages - Oh Mahasiya, Naaku Mukka, Where is the party tonight, Voda Voda Voda and now Kolaveri di. Even Superstar Rajnikanth's son-in-law Dhanush, who has penned the lyrics and sung the song, wonders as he croons 'Why this Kolaveri'. The movie 3 is directed by his wife and Ranjini's daughter Aishwarya Dhannush. It costars Kamal Hassan's daughter Sruthi Hassan.

"We did not plan or write down this song. When I explained the scenes to Dhanush he started humming this song at home and I told him we should include this in the movie. And he immediately told me, Why this Kolaveri di (murderous rage)? That's how the idea for this song came up," says Aishwarya.

Industry experts say that the USP of this simple groovy song is the usage of colloquial words that people can connect with. "They wanted me a write a song for this movie and I wanted to do something new this time. I thought this song should have a new concept and used Tanglish words," says Dhanush.

"What made the song so special was using common words like generally, sorry, come, go... These are words that people can relate to. I did not write the lyrics down... I just sang it."

"It a classic case study of online marketing. When we uploaded on day one the hits were normal," says Shridhar Subramaniam, President, Sony India & Middle East, who is publishing the album.

"But now we have requests pouring in from all parts of the world. Looks like it would explode."