OVERALL COMMENTS:

Thank you, God. Vijay has stopped doing action movies and returns to romance, the thing he was best at to begin with. In accordance with that, his musical albums will probably get better as well.

While the songs for "Tamizhan" and "Youth" and "Bhagavathy" arrived on the scene with much fanfare -- despite the fact that the music for all those movies was pretty bad -- "Vaseegara" arrives on the scene with almost no fanfare. And guess what -- the music is the best there has been for Vijay movies recently.

In fact, the more I listen, the more likely my 3 / 5 will go up in score.

Many scoffed that S.A. Rajkumar was composing the music for this one. Excuse me, it was S.A. Rajkumar who did the music for "Poovae Unnakkaaga," "Thullaatha Manamum Thullum," and "Priyamaanavalae" -- three movies which greatly contributed to Vijay's current success, and all of which had great soundtracks.

"Vaseegara" isn't as good as those (at first listen, anyway; it's almost sure the score will go up after repeated listenings), but it's still pretty good.

SONG-BY-SONG REVIEW:

1. Aaha Enbaargal -- Shankar Mahadevan.
A quick-beat song "varnuchifying" the heroine sung aptly by Shankar Mahadevan. No classic, but not a bad start to the album and far better than the "Old Model" nonsense we've been getting from Vijay movies recently. Pretty good lyrics, good capable singing, and okay music. This one's a: Very Nice.

2. Marriage Endraal -- Karthik.
There's recently been a resurgence of songs calling out to God to help out with love (think of "Hello Hello Muruga" from "Six Teens"), and this one is the kind of song that might be fun to watch on-screen. It's slightly dappaanguthu (not really) with some okay lyrics, okay music, and good singing by Karthik. If this is the worst that "Vaseegara" is going to get, though, it's going to be a good album. Nice.

3. Oru Thadavai -- Hariharan, Chinmayi.
Good song. Chinmayi (of "Oru Deivam Thantha" fame) is back, and she proves she's just as good in faster love songs. The music is fast and good with a good beat, the lyrics are nice, both singers do great jobs, and this is just an overall good song that does deserve repeats on the CD player. Between a Very Nice and an Excellent.

4. Nenjam Oru Murai -- Srinivas, Mahalakshmi.
And here we have another great love song. Mahalakshmi sings wonderfully. Srinivas is good. The music is subdued but pretty good, and the lyrics are consistently good. Maybe it's not as good as "Oru Thadavai," but it's awfully close. Between a Very Nice and an Excellent.

5. Poopola Theepola -- Hariharan.
And here we have another song capably sung by Hariharan. It's a love song which vacillates between slow speed and fast speed. It has good lyrics, and some okay music. It's not as good as "Oru Thadavai" or as fun as "Aaha Enbaargal," but it's still pretty good. Between a Nice and a Very Nice.

6. Vaendaam Vaendaam -- Udit Narayanan, Sadhana Sargam.
And here we have two Hindi imports singing; one, Sadhana Sargam, who seems to have mastered at least the simpler aspects of the Tamil language and two, Udit Narayanan, who doesn't seem to care about singing Tamil correctly. In addition, Udit sounds "wrong" for this song. The music -- good. The lyrics -- okay. The singing -- jarring. All in all, it's a: Nice.

VIJAY VANNIARAJAN