Adnan Sami calls out remix trend in music industry: ‘Audiences are savouring dry rice because biryani isn’t served’ | Hindi Movie News

Adnan Sami has taken a firm stance against the music industry’s increasing reliance on remixes, pushing back on the widely cited excuse that this trend simply reflects what listeners want. According to the singer-composer, audiences remain hungry for original material, it’s the labels and industry stakeholders who have failed to meet that demand.

The shift from 80:20 to 20:80

Sami was clear that his issue isn’t with remixing old tracks altogether, but with how dramatically the balance between original music and remixes has shifted. Speaking on the Game Changers podcast, he said, “The corporates are scared to experiment. It is happening even in cinemas. Remakes are attempted, sequels are made; even prequels are planned! Off-shoots are also working.”

Adnan Sami on drawing a parallel with Hollywood

To illustrate his point, Sami pointed to the Batman franchise, noting how DC eventually turned to spin-offs once the core series reached saturation. This led to Todd Phillips’ Joker in 2019, centred on Joaquin Phoenix’s portrayal of the iconic villain, followed by a less successful sequel a few years later. He also referenced Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, noting it wasn’t the first cinematic adaptation of Homer’s epic, that distinction belongs to Mario Camerini’s 1954 film Ulysses, starring Kirk Douglas, yet Nolan’s version has still crossed nearly $1.5 billion at the global box office. While acknowledging that sequels have existed for classics like The Godfather and Star Wars: Episode I, Sami stressed that such follow-ups were once the exception rather than the rule, a pattern he believes has now become the norm in Indian cinema and music, where old songs from the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s are only partially reworked, with the iconic hooks and choruses left largely untouched.

Adnan Sami on comparing remixes to ‘dry rice’

Sami didn’t hold back in critiquing labels’ justification that remixes simply cater to what audiences want. “If you ask someone, ‘Why are you feeding him sookhe chawal (dry rice)?,’ he’d reply, ‘That’s what he wants. See how much he’s savouring it.’ But he’s savouring it as you didn’t serve him khichdi or biryani,” he said, warning that an entire generation risks growing up without original Hindi songs to call their own. He was also careful to shift blame away from composers themselves. “I can give you in writing that no music director ever dreamed as a child that he would grow up and work on remixes. So, don’t blame them. Blame those who make them do it by force,” he added.

Adnan Sami on the work front

On the work front, Adnan Sami had lent his vocals for the Sidharth Malhotra and Janhvi Kapoor’s ‘Param Sundari’ song ‘Bheegi Saree’ in 2025.