CHENNAI: Yet another single from music director Anirudh seems to have taken the world by storm. Just like Kolaveri di and Chancey illa, the music director’s Valentine’s Day single, Avalukena, has turned out to be a veritable chartbuster. The video has already garnered over 6,50,000 hits on YouTube and the numbers are only rising steadily.
Sung by Anirudh and Srinidhi Venkatesh, the video, the description of which reads, “Avalukena is a breathtakingly beautiful serenade from a guy to his lady love for whom he would go to the world’s very end to make her happy,” has been directed by Vignesh Shivan, who has also penned the lyrics.
Talking to Express, Anirudh says, “I consider February 14 to be a very auspicious day for me career-wise. I therefore make it a point to release my songs on that day. I have been releasing songs for the last four years on this particular day. Last year, I released Yenakenna Yaarumillai on the same day. The year before last, the album of Velai illa Pattathari released. This year too, I wanted to release a number on Valentine’s Day and I had been holding on to this song, which was done almost a month ago. I wanted a video to go along with it since I believe the impact of a song is better with visuals. I only gave Vignesh a broad idea and he has delivered more than what we had in mind. Credit for the success of this album must also go to Vignesh.”
The video was made in just 10 days, with the team taking five days to shoot and five for post-production.
Vignesh Shivan, also the director of recent hit Naanum Rowdy Dhaan, says, “It was completely Anirudh’s idea. In fact, his music was the inspiration. After listening to his music, we decided to do justice to the song and planned to do a video. We felt that we needed to do something more than just the ordinary.”
“We shot for a few days in the fag-end of January and the remaining portions were shot in February. Romance is a subject that has usually been confined to youngsters. We wanted to change it and decided to have a story that will not be shot for the lyrics,” says Vignesh, pointing out that it is the advantage that one has while making an independent video.
The two say they never actually expected the video to be such a big hit. “To be honest, we never expected anything. We looked to do justice to the song and counted on God’s grace,” says Vignesh.