Tamil 'nonsense' film song goes viral in India

A Tamil film song in broken English has gone viral on the internet and has kicked up a storm in India.

Tamil actor Dhanush's pop song Kolaveri (Killer Rage) has been viewed on YouTube more than two million times and has been shared over 700,000 times on Facebook since its release last week.

The song has been composed for an upcoming Tamil film called 3, directed by Dhanush's wife Aishwarya.

Tamil cinema is one of India's most thriving entertainment industries.

Dhanush is the son-in-law of Rajinikanth, Tamil cinema's biggest star.

"The song is about a guy who has been dumped by the girlfriend," Dhanush told The Times Of India newspaper.

"He is drunk and he is singing. But the director wanted the lines to be really funny. I did not know how to write a song about a guy who has just been dumped in a funny way. I did not think. It just came to me."

'Irreverent'

The result is a song about heartbreak in simple, somewhat nonsensical words, in a unique language that can only be called "Tamglish" - a mix of Tamil and English.

"We all expected it to be a hit by not the kind of rage that it has become today," Anirudh Ravichander, who composed the song, said.

So what is it about Kolaveri that has made it the most hummed tune in India today?

Shridhar Subramaniam, chief of Sony Music Entertainment India, says Kolaveri is a "genre-bending" tune.

"I cannot exactly define what makes it work, but it gets under your skin, gets into your head and the moment you hear it, you cannot stop humming it," he said.

It is not only the young who are enjoying the song, although it does seem to be coming a part of India's youthspeak.

One fan, Shobha Prasad, director of a market research company, said: "It is chilled out, spontaneous, irreverent, has attitude and quintessential Tamil street humour."

The film 3 is itself much anticipated as it brings together the daughters of one-time rivals and now friends Rajinikanth and Kamal Hassan.

Rajinikanth's daughter Aishwarya is director and Hassan's daughter Shruti is acting in the film.