New Vs Old is a 5.40 minute mash up video of 16 new and old songs that makes you hum along is something that you might see on YouTube or come across on your social media feed. After touching a whopping 1 million views within a few days of being uploaded, singers Deepshikha Raina and Raj Barman are on demand and is loving the requests that are pouring in. Both the singers are YouTube stars and have a huge number of devoted followers.
Recorded and produced by a music company called Devottes Insanos (a group comprising an artiste, music director and song writer) , the mash up has Deepshikha’s idea for a theme. A passionate singer, Deepshikha had left her corporate life to pursue singing full time. Having sung covers and made many YouTube videos for her songs, Deepshikha’s idea of a mashup was to pick the best songs from two generations of the music industry and sing with another cover singer.
While she contacted many, only Raj Barman responded almost immediately. “Raj is a popular singer from Kolkata and his interest in the project too was overwhelming. Once he decided to go ahead with the idea his involvement was the same as ours,” says Deepshikha. Raj Barman has done playback singing for Bengali movies. Anyone who watches the music video could never tell that the two singers have not met yet. The perfectly choreographed video was actually not shot in the studio with the two singers taking cue and singing, shares Deepshikha. “Since Raj is based out of Kolkata he sang and video recorded his list of songs, i.e the old songs. Then I sang and recorded mine and we made the video in our studio, Devottes Insanos,” explains Deepshikha.
Deepshikha an engingeer from Rajasthan gave up her professional career to pursue singing. Though not a trained singer, her good voice and her love for singing made her take up her friend’s offer to join his music company. After that she started doing covers and soon she had about 20 million followers on her YouTube channel. “I have now started taking classes for classical singing. What I am doing now makes me happy and I wouldn’t want to do anything else apart from singing,” she says. Is doing covers an easy way for budding singers to get recognised ? Deepshikha replies, “If the singers know how best to treat the classic songs while recreating them, it can bring instant fame. These cover artistes are doing good and a lot of them are making good music videos.”
The New Vs Old mashup feat breaks stereotypes; Deepshikha sings many of Arijit’s popular numbers in female voice in it. Was it difficult? The singer says it was all conducted in various steps to get the perfect coordination while mixing the videos. “First the scale was decided, then the tempo and it all fell in place.” The other video from Devottes Insanos that went viral was The One India mashup a five-minute vidoe of 20 songs that sing praises of our country.