The enduring legacy of Oscars 2023 Best Original Song winner RRR's 'Naatu Naatu'

(Top, left) Oscars 2023 Best Original Song 'Naatu Naatu' composer MM Keeravaani (right) and lyricist Chandrabose; and stills from the Oscar-winning song from SS Rajamouli's Telugu film 'RRR'.

Naatu Naatu — the infectiously catchy dance number from SS Rajamouli’s anti-colonial historical fantasy RRR — made history at the Oscars last night, becoming the first ever track from an Indian film to win the award for Best Original Song. The honours seemed written in the stars for Naatu Naatu, after it had already won the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice awards for best song. Even so, it’s a momentous win, the latest and biggest achievement for an Indian music industry making big moves on the global stage. Composer MM Keeravaani wins more hearts by singing his wish-come-true set to The Carpenters' Top of the World in his Oscars acceptance speech on March 12.

M. M. Keeravani and Chandrabose’s acceptance speech for the Best Original Song #Oscar

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The MM Keeravaani composition — with lyrics by Chandrabose and performed by singers Rahul Sipligunj and Kaala Bhairava — beat out some heavy-hitters to take the trophy home, winning out over stars like Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Mitski and Academy favourite Diane Warren. It now joins AR Rahman’s 2009 hit Jai Ho on the vanishing small list of non-English tracks to win the award. When Sipligunj and Bhairava took to the stage with a coterie of back-up dancers to perform the song at the Oscars, they received a standing ovation, proof of just how complete RRR and Naatu Naatu’s conquest of the global pop imagination has been.

The track itself is straight out of the Telugu film music songbook, with turbocharged folk drums and familiar filmy string and violin arrangements. Sonically or lyrically, it isn’t leagues ahead of its contemporaries. In fact, it’s probably not MM Keeravaani’s best work. But, just like Jai ho in 2009, the music, its visuals and the broader context of the film it’s in have all aligned to make Naatu Naatu one of the most recognisable tunes from 2022.

Part of the magic — especially for international audiences — lies in the story the song tells, set within the film’s larger revolution-focused plot. “Not salsa, not flamenco my brother, do you know naatu (dance),” Ram Charan’s Alluri Sitarama Raju asks a floppy British bully at the beginning of the song, setting up a revolutionary dance-off between two Indian revolutionaries and their stiff-legged colonial overlords. The two hook-step their way to victory in front of the Ukrainian Presidential Palace in Kyiv, in a perfect marriage between highfalutin anti-colonial rhetoric, post-YRF Indian cinema’s addiction to foreign locales, and the sheer exuberant extravagance of an Indian movie dance number.

In a sense, Ram Charan, co-star NT Rama Rao Jr (aka Jr NTR) and choreographer Prem Rakshith deserve just as much credit for the song’s success. Ever since RRR released to surprisingly rave reviews in the US last year, influencers on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok who have flooded the internet with millions of videos of themselves dancing along to the track, performing the now-iconic hook step. RRR’s LA screenings in recent months have seen patrons leave their seats to dance along to the song in the aisles and in front of the screen.

The fact that a Telugu dance track was the grassroots favourite for the category ahead of globally established names is a win not just for India, but specifically the Telugu film industry (and south Indian cinema at large). RRR and Naatu Naatu’s success has complicated the simplistic Bollywood-dominant narrative of Indian film and music abroad, and shown that India has other fantastically creative film industries as well. Even domestically, it’s another example to show that while Bollywood flounders, its lesser-known cousins across south India are making big strides and setting themselves up as potential challengers for the Indian film crown.

The award is also a shot in the arm for Indian musicians and composers who, having seen the unlikely success of K-Pop and Latin Pop in recent years, are now considering a global market for their work. If a Telugu song can win at the Oscars, and an all-Spanish album be a favourite at the Grammys (Bad Bunny was robbed, y’all!), then why can’t the next global superstar be a Punjabi rapper or a Tamil gaana singer? That’s a hypothetical that Indian stars and music industry executives have already been exploring, and this win will only reinforce their efforts.

But it’s important not to get too carried away. At least, part of the RRR and Naatu hype comes from its exoticism for foreign audiences, who have rarely been exposed to Indian film’s song-and-dance addiction in full, unadulterated flow. But give them a steady drip-feed of that fare, and will the global locales and synchronised group-dance be all that new and exciting anymore? And does the success of a film song — with all the marketing machinery, PR pushes and Academy networking behind it — translate to a broader opening of the door for Indian music?

We’ve already experienced this euphoric optimism before, when Rahman won in 2009, but no big Indian wave followed. Because, it turns out, becoming a global pop star takes a lot more than a viral hit or two, especially one tied so closely to the fortunes of a feature film. It’s a different world in 2023, with global audiences a lot more open to music in different languages that takes inspiration from across the world.

Even so, the path to an Indian Bad Bunny or Shakira is a long one, with plenty of milestones still to go. Naatu Naatu’s Oscar win is an important step on that road, but it’s unlikely to be the final — or even a highly influential one. That’s fine though, because despite its revolutionary scene-setting, Naatu Naatu isn’t a song that was made to win global accolades or to carry the weight of an entire country’s expectations. No, it’s a song that celebrates the power of music, dance and pure joy. And in that mission, it has already been more successful than Keeravaani could ever have imagined.