August 31, 2023 at PDT
Mann - Single
The Yellow Diary have proudly flown the flag for arena-ready indie rock across India for almost a decade. Originating in Mumbai in 2015, the quintet serve up the sort of pulsating pop tunes that can get any crowd going, while also making time to focus on electronic vibes—and to dress it all down for emotional ballads with heartfelt lyrics.
One such song that the band have regularly performed live since they wrote it just a year after forming is the emotive “Sada”—a track that addresses a blossoming relationship and builds to a dramatic chorus. You may think that tune was already on an album but you’d be mistaken; it only took them about seven years, but it has finally found its place on their third EP, Mann.
Vocalist/lyricist Rajan Batra tells Apple Music that “it seems like the past and the future [are] meeting with the present” on the record—a description he borrows from bassist Stuart DaCosta. That may be apt, particularly given the fact there are only three tracks on the EP—the same count as 2018’s Marz and Izafa. There’s a thematic cohesion throughout, although the band put their picking only a trio of songs down to “habit”.
“We realised when we put the songs together, it felt like [detailing] the emotions of a relationship,” Bartra says. “Like, when you have a crush on somebody or you start falling in love with somebody. That’s what a song like ‘Mann’ captures. ‘Sada’ talks about what being in a relationship is like. ‘Kaun Mera’ is that one song that talks about how relationships are not always going to be happy.”
Below, The Yellow Diary’s Batra, keyboardist/vocalist/producer Himonshu Parikh and the most recent member, guitarist Harshvardhan Gadhvi discuss the stories behind the songs.
“Mann”
Batra, who outlines that this track “talks about this new couple who are reminiscing about how they’ve come together and what has led to their story”, says: “Harsh [Gadhvi], being the guitarist, wrote the piano part when the song ends. He played it very fondly on the piano while we were writing the song and we were like, ‘OK, that sounds like a great part. But what do you have for the guitar?’”
Parikh says: “He played it so well and it’s so different from my style of playing. When I was recording, I had to do it justice and it took me at least 30 takes but I finally got it right.” Batra jokes that Parikh gives the guitarist a “criminal side eye” at this point. Gadhvi adds: “Normally, I’m very critical about songwriting. I’d throw out my ideas when I got them. With these boys, when I got in the room, one thing led to another and we had a song.”
“Sada”
“The recording we originally had of this was something we did in 2016, like a live studio recording,” Parikh says. “We were convinced that we wanted to re-record the entire song. It was really fun to sit in the studio and then kind of understand how much we wanted to change it. We didn’t want to lose the essence of the song and make it something completely different.”
Batra adds: “‘Sada’ talks about two people being together and how their love has become their guide, has become their North Star. It tells them what to do, where to go next. It gives them directions and it leads them. I feel like all of us have this time where our relationships are being guided with the feelings that we are dealing with.”
“Kaun Mera”
“We had a slightly different approach going into this,” Parikh explains. “There are some things you did at a point and you felt like it was OK. You don’t have to change everything, you know? That’s what happened with ‘Kaun Mera’. This song was originally written in 2018 for a project. We thought of doing it all over again but then we thought, ‘Why?’ It’s a part of our past and what we had done to it then was what it was. We wanted to retain that fibre of it. It’s very out-of-character for us, not to record everything a month before release and do it completely fresh. But something inside us said it sounded good.”
On the song’s subject matter, Batra notes: “There are times when you’ve spent so much time with this person and you think you absolutely know them. But what happens is that with time, everybody’s changing. Sometimes you catch on to those changes and sometimes you don’t. And when you don’t, you suddenly realise how big that change has now become. You have seen it this late and you suddenly feel like, ‘I don’t even know this person.’ And the question then arises; you ask them, ‘Who are you?’ You know, ‘Who are you to me? Do I even know you?’ That’s the space this captures.”
3 Tracks
