''Nippon Paint Super Singer 5'' - ''Thamizhagathil Brahmaanda Kuralukkaana Thedal'', the fifth season of the

Airtel Super Singer Super Singer is an 2006 Indian Tamil-language reality television singing competition, that is sponsored by Asian Paints for the nine Season. The show is televised in India on Vijay TV, and worldwide through partner broadcasting networks. The s ...

show, is a reality-based

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

singing competition A music competition is a public event designed to identify and award outstanding musical ensembles, soloists, composers, conductors and musicologists. Pop music competitions are music competitions which are held to find pop starlets. Examples ...

Tamil language Tamil (; ' , ) is a Dravidian language natively spoken by the Tamil people of South Asia. Tamil is an official language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, the sovereign nations of Sri Lanka and Singapore, and the Indian territory of Pudu ...

that aired on

Vijay TV Star Vijay is an Indian Tamil language general entertainment pay television channel owned by Disney Star (formerly Star India), a subsidiary of Asianet Star Communications. The channel's headquarters is in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Star Vijay chang ...

. It was designed to be a talent hunt to find the best voice of

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...

. The show premiered on 2 June 2015, and episodes were telecast between Monday to Friday each week at 9:30pm. Persons above the age of 16 years were permitted to audition to showcase their talent on Vijay TV's platform. This program was sponsored by

Nippon Paint is a Japanese paint and paint products manufacturing company. It is the fourth largest paint manufacturer globally based on revenue in 2020. History The company, was founded in 1881 by Jujiro Motegi under the name Komyosha(Yamato Jujiro Shot ...

The show was hosted by Makapa Anand, Priyanka Deshpande, and Bhavna. For the performance rounds by the top 30 contestants, voice trainer

Ananth Vaidyanathan Ananth Vaidyanathan (born 1 November 1957) is an Indian singing trainer, who is popular for his appearances on reality singing television shows. He is often regarded as India's leading voice expert. He has also worked on few films as an actor a ...

appeared fairly regularly on the show.

Srinivas Srinivasa (Sanskrit ) is a Hindus, Hindu name. The term Srinivasa is Vaishnavism, Vaishnava in origin, the combination of two Sanskrit words, ''Shri'' (श्री) and ''nivasa'' (निवास). It is a name for males in India as well as a fa ...

and Unnikrishnan returned as permanent judges who appeared regularly throughout the show. The third permanent judge of the show consisted of appearances by either former junior season judge,

Usha Uthup Usha Uthup Iyer (born 7 November 1947) is an Indian pop, filmi, jazz, and playback singer who sang songs in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. "Darling", which she recorded with Rekha Bhardwaj for the film ''7 Khoon Maaf'', won the Filmfare Award ...

, or current junior season judge,

Mano Mano may refer to: People * Mano people, an ethnic group in Liberia * Mano (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname * Mano (Mozambican footballer) (born 1984), real name Celso Halilo de Abdul * Mano (Portuguese footballer) ...

, whilst the show necessarily continues to seek a suitable replacement. Following the request of viewers,

Sujatha Mohan Sujatha Mohan (credited as Sujatha) is an Indian playback singer who is popular for singing in Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu movies. She has also sung for Kannada, Badaga, Hindi and Marathi movies. In a career spanning 48 years, she has recorde ...

ceased her regular permanent judge appointment, but occasionally attended to judge contestant performances. Special guest judges or guest performers who appeared on the show during the season consisted of a variety of eminent playback singers and music directors, including

P. Susheela Pulapaka Susheela (born 13 November 1935), popularly known as P. Susheela, is an Indian playback singer associated with the South Indian cinema primarily from Andhra Pradesh for over six decades. She is one of the greatest and best-known playba ...

Vani Jairam Vani Jairam (born as Kalaivani on 30 November 1945), also credited as Vani Jayaram, is an Indian singer. She is best known as a playback singer in South Indian cinema. Vani's career started in 1971 and has spanned over five decades. She has do ...

S. P. Balasubrahmanyam Sripathi Panditaradhyula Balasubrahmanyam (4 June 1946 – 25 September 2020), also referred to as SPB or SP Balu or Balu, was an Indian playback singer, television presenter, actor, music composer, dubbing artist, and film producer. He is wi ...

Vairamuthu Vairamuthu Ramasamy (born 13 July 1953) is an Indian lyricist, poet, and novelist working in the Tamil film industry. He is a prominent figure in the Tamil literary world. A master's graduate from the Pachaiyappa's College in Chennai, he first ...

, S. P. Sailaja, Nithyasree Mahadevan,

Sudha Raghunathan Sudha Ragunathan is an Indian Carnatic vocalist, singer and composer. She was conferred the Kalaimamani award by the Government of Tamil Nadu in 1994, Padma Shri (2004) and Padma Bhushan (2015) by the Government of India, and Sangeetha Kalanidh ...

Sikkil Gurucharan . In 2020, he acted in a tamil anthology film, Putham Pudhu Kaalai. Early life Around 1987, as a 5-year-old, Gurucharan was casually coaxed by his grandmothers, the Sikkil Sisters, to sing some tune. After a little cajoling, he sang a popular f ...

, Pushpavanam Kuppuswamy,

Sowmya Sowmya is a given name for females. It means "That which is born of Soma". Soma means Chandra, the lunar deity. Sowmya therefore means Budha, because Budha is said to be the son of Chandra. Sowmya also means ''shubhagrahas'' or beneficial. Sowmya al ...

, T. L. Maharajen,

Gana Bala Bala Murugan, better known by his stage name Gana Bala is an Indian playback singer in Tamil cinema. He rose to prominence after rendering the songs 'Aadi Pona Aavani' and 'Nadukadalula Kappala' from the soundtrack of ''Attakathi''. He has pred ...

Velmurugan Velmurugan is a Tamil film playback singer. He is known for folk songs including Madura in ''Subramaniapuram'' and Aadungada in ''Naadodigal'' and Otha Sollala in ''Aadukalam''. He considers being called by James Vasanthan James Vasanthan i ...

Chinnaponnu Chinnaponnu (also credited as Chinna Ponnu or Chinnaponnu Kumar) is a folk and playback singer from the state of Tamil Nadu, India. Early life Chinnaponnu was born in Suranam, a small village in Sivagangai district, Tamil Nadu, India. She star ...

Vijay Prakash Vijay Prakash (born 21 February 1976) is an Indian Playback singer and also a Music Composer from Karnataka. He has given his voice for predominantly Kannada and Telugu language films. In addition, he has also sung in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam an ...

, as well as stars from the junior version of the show, such as permanent judges

K. S. Chitra Krishnan Nair Shantakumari Chithra (born 27 July 1963), always credited as K. S. Chithra or Chithra, is an Indian playback singer and Carnatic musician. In a career spanning over four decades, she has recorded over 25,000 songs in various I ...

and

Malgudi Shubha Malgudi Subha (born 17 October 1965; also spelled as Malgadi Shuba) is an Indian playback singer. She has recorded songs in Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi. In a career spanning two decades, she sang more than 3000 songs. She beg ...

, and former contestants of prior seasons of the show.

Auditions

Ground auditions were held in the cities of

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

Coimbatore Coimbatore, also spelt as Koyamputhur (), sometimes shortened as Kovai (), is one of the major metropolitan cities in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is located on the banks of the Noyyal River and surrounded by the Western Ghats. Coimbato ...

, and

Trichy Tiruchirappalli () ( formerly Trichinopoly in English), also called Tiruchi or Trichy, is a major tier II city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the administrative headquarters of Tiruchirappalli district. The city is credited with bein ...

. Ground level auditions were telecast from 2 June 2015. Preliminary round auditions were telecast from 3 June 2015. The auditions were held in various parts of Tamil Nadu, and were telecast until 4 July 2015. First round audition judges included season 3 winner

Saisharan P. Sai Sharan is a Carnatic musician and Indian playback singer from Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He rose to prominence after winning the third season of the '' Airtel Super Singer''. He was previously a top 4 finalist in the debut season of the junio ...

, season 4 winner

Diwakar Dhivagaran Santhosh (also known as ''Diwakar'') is an Indian playback singer and live performer. He is best known for winning season 4 of '' Airtel Super Singer'', a Tamil language musical reality TV show which was telecast from December 2012 ...

, and former contestants from those seasons such as

D. Sathyaprakash D. or d. may refer to, usually as an abbreviation: * Don (honorific), a form of address in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and their former overseas empires, usually given to nobles or other individuals of high social rank. * Date of death, as an abbreviati ...

, Pooja Vaidyanath, Santhosh Hariharan, and Sonia. Second and third round audition judges included

S. P. Charan Sripathi Panditharadhyula Charan is an Indian film playback singer, actor, producer and director known for his works in Tamil cinema and Telugu cinema. He is the son of legendary singer S. P. Balasubrahmanyam. He first worked as a playback sin ...

, Pushpavanam Kuppuswamy,

Devan Ekambaram Devan Ekambaram (born 25 December 1975) is an Indian American film playback singer, actor and composer. He began his career as a playback singer in Tamil films and later branched out to many other south Indian languages as well like Telugu, ...

James Vasanthan James Vasanthan is an Indian Television (Tamil) host, a film music composer, and a filmmaker and a motivational speaker. For more than two decades, he has worked as an anchor in popular Tamil satellite television channels like Sun TV and Vijay ...

Mahathi Mahathi. S, known by the mononym Mahathi is a Carnatic musician and playback singer for film songs in several Indian languages such as Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Punjabi. Family Mahathi hails from a family of musicians: her fathe ...

, and

Shalini Shalini (born 20 November 1979), also known as Baby Shalini, is a former Indian child artist and actress who predominantly worked in Malayalam and Tamil films. During the 80s, Shalini was the most successful child artist in the Malayalam film i ...

. Zonal audition judges were permanent judges from the junior version of the show,

, and

K. S. Chithra Krishnan Nair Shantakumari Chithra (born 27 July 1963), always credited as K. S. Chithra or Chithra, is an Indian playback singer and Carnatic musician. In a career spanning over four decades, she has recorded over 25,000 songs in various In ...

. A total of 33 contestants were selected for the finals, including local, international, and former contestants.

Finalists

Anand Aravindakshan Anand Aravindakshan (born 1989) is an Indian playback singer, and the 2016 title winner of Airtel Super Singer Season 5, a television-based reality singing competition in Tamil televised on Vijay TV. Early life Anand did his school education ...

(contestant ID SS05 Entered Finals) * Fareedha M (contestant ID SS02 Entered Finals) * Rajaganapathy G (contestant ID SS03 Entered Finals) * Siyad K (contestant ID SS04 Entered Finals) * Lakshmi Pradeep (contestant ID SS07 Entered Finals) * Priya jerson (contestant ID SS06) * Sowmya (contestant ID SS12) * Arjun adapalli (contestant ID SS01) * Nirujan S (contestant ID SS10) * Latha Krishna R (contestant ID SS08) * Arvind Mukundan (contestant ID SS09) * Irwin Victoria Thomas (contestant ID SS11)

Finals

Main Competition Performance Rounds

Judge Team Selection Round (7 July 2015 – 11 July 2015)

Top 30 Celebration Round (14 July 2015 – 18 July 2015)

Introduction Round (21 July 2015 – 25 July 2015)

Tribute to MSV Round (28 July 2015 – 1 August 2015)

* Special Guest Judge:

Western Round (4 August 2015 - 8 August 2015

Latest Hits Round (11 August 2015 - 15 August 2015

Dance Attack Round: Top 25 Selection (18 August 2015 - 22 August 2015

Hip Hop Disco Round (25 August 2015 - 29 August 2015

Duet Round (1 September 2015 - 5 September 2015

Top 20 Selection Round (8 September 2015 - 12 August 2015

Folk Round Special (15 September 2015 - 19 September 2015

One-on-One Challenge Round (22 September 2015 - 26 September 2015

Dedication Round (29 September 2015 - 3 October 2015

Round (6 October 2015 - 10 October 2015

Top 15 Performance Round (13 October 2015 - 17 October 2015

Sujatha Deva Round (20 October 2015 - 24 October 2015

P Susheela's and LR Easwari Hit Songs Round (27 October 2015 - 31 October 2015

SPB Special: Top 10 Selection Round (3 November 2015 - 7 November 2015

Devotional Songs Round (10 November 2015 - 12 November 2015

Classical Songs Round (12 November 2015 - 15 November 2015)

*Special Guest Judges: Nithyasree Mahadevan,

, &

*Permanent Judge: Unnikrishnan This round required the contestants to perform songs of a

Carnatic classical music Carnatic music, known as or in the South Indian languages, is a system of music commonly associated with South India, including the modern Indian states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and Sri Lanka. It is o ...

genre. Viewers agreed with judges that the round held during this season outmatched previous seasons in terms of orchestra, judging panel, and overall talent.

Top 10 Selection Round (17 November 2015 - 21 November 2015)

Top 10 Celebration Round (24 November 2015 - 28 November 2015)

Jolly Folk Songs Round (1 December 2015 - 5 December 2015)

Gaana Folk Songs Round (8 December 2015 - 12 December 2015

Special Round (15 December 2015 - 19 December 2015)

Chennai Flood Victims Tribute Round (22 December 2015 - 24 December 2015)

MGR Special Round (25 December 2015 - 26 December 2015)

Vairamuthu Special Round (29 December 2015 - 1 January 2016)

Top 6 Selection Round (5 January 2016 - 9 January 2016)

Top 5 Selection Round (12 January 2016 - 15 January 2016)

Top 5 Selection Round (12 January 2016 – 15 January 2016)

* Permanent Host: The top 6 remaining contestants were required to perform. At the conclusion of the round, was eliminated.

Top 5 Celebration Round (19 January 2016 – 23 January 2016)

* Permanent Host: The top 5 remaining contestants performed against top 5 contestants from seasons 3 and 4, as well as seasons 2, 3, and 4 of the junior version of the show.

Quarterfinals (26 January 2016 – 30 January 2016)

* Permanent Host:

Semi Finals Round (2 February 2016 – 11 February 2016)

* Permanent Host:

Journey of Finalists (12 February 2016 – 13 February 2016)

Wildcard Rounds & SS Awards

Wildcard Entry Round (16 February 2016 – 17 February 2016)

* Host:

Wildcard Performance Round (18 February 2016 - 27 February 2016)

* Host:

Super Singer Awards & Wildcard Results (1 March 2016 – 9 March 2016)

* Host:

Wildcard Tiebreaker (9 March 2016 – 10 March 2016)

* Host:

Prefinal Rounds

Strings Unplugged Round (10 March 2016 - 11 March 2016)

* Permanent Host:

Super Singers Perform Live (12 March 2016)

* Permanent Host:

Set Finals (14 March 2016 – 17 March 2016)

* Permanent Host: Makapa Anand & Priyanka Deshpande

Live Grand Finale (18 March 2016)

* Permanent Hosts: Priyanka Deshpande, Makapa Anand, & Bhavna Balakrishnan * Chief Guest: music director

Santhosh Narayanan Santhosh Narayanan is an Indian composer and musician in the Tamil film industry. Early life Santhosh Narayanan was born in Tiruchirappalli, India. He is the younger of two children. He was educated at RSK Higher Secondary School, Tiruchirappa ...

* Judges: Nithyasree Mahadevan,

Sudha Ragunathan Sudha Ragunathan is an Indian Carnatic vocalist, singer and composer. She was conferred the Kalaimamani award by the Government of Tamil Nadu in 1994, Padma Shri (2004) and Padma Bhushan (2015) by the Government of India, and Sangeetha Kalanidh ...

, Mahanadhi Shobana Vignesh, Vinaya, Pushpavanam Kuppuswamy,

Srilekha Parthasarathy Srilekha Parthasarathy ( ta, ஸ்ரீலேகா பார்த்தசாரதிis a Tamil singer. She is commonly referred to by her first name Srilekha. She began her professional career in 2000, when she recorded the jingle for th ...

, T. L. Maharajen,

Ramya NSK Ramya NSK is an Indian playback singer, who has predominantly sung for Tamil language and films. Apart from her work as a singer, she is recognised for being the granddaughter of comedian N. S. Krishnan, actor K. R. Ramaswamy and actress T. A. ...

, Gana Bala,

, and

* Guest Performers:

Sid Sriram Sidharth "Sid" Sriram (born 19 May 1990) is an Indian Carnatic musician, music producer, playback singer, and songwriter. He is an R&B songwriter and has been working in the Tamil ,Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi, Marathi and English music ...

Benny Dayal Benny Dayal (born 13 May 1984) is an Indian playback singer. He is a prominent singer in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Gujarati and Marathi and more languages films. He has sung more than 3500 songs in 19+ Indian languages. ...

, Rapper Dinesh Kanagaratnam with wildcard contestants Sowmya, Priya, and Nirujan (violin), 10-year old Lidian Nadhaswaram (keyboard),

Stephen Devassy Stephen Devassy (born 23 February 1981) is an Indian musician hailing from Palakkad, Kerala. He started his career at a very early age, and has performed on stage around the world. Stephen is the founder of Musik Lounge, an audio technology sch ...

(keyboard), and stars from previous seasons of the show. * Chorus/vocal backing: Stars from previous seasons of the show, including notably Dhanyashree ( senior season 3), Saivignesh ( senior season 4), Haripriya ( junior season 3 & 4), Narayanan (senior season 4), Bharath (junior season 4), Sriisha (junior season 4), Soundarya Bala Nandakumar (senior seasons 3 & 4), and others * Competition Performances: The grand finale was held on 18 March 2016 at DB Jain College in Thuraipakkam, Chennai. Telecast live from 7:30pm (Indian Standard Time), the running time for the episode exceeded 5 hours, having concluded after 12:45am on the following day, 19 March 2016. Various playback singers, performers, and music lovers attended the event.

Grand Final Results (Season 5)

Controversy

The Hindu ''The Hindu'' is an Indian English-language daily newspaper owned by The Hindu Group, headquartered in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. It began as a weekly in 1878 and became a daily in 1889. It is one of the Indian newspapers of record and the secon ...

'' newspaper and other media outlets reported that the

show, its winning contestant, and its telecasting channel

Star Vijay Star Vijay is an Indian Tamil language general entertainment pay television channel owned by Disney Star (formerly Star India), a subsidiary of Asianet Star Communications. The channel's headquarters is in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. Star Vijay change ...

landed in controversy after the finale; "trending on social media for all the wrong reasons". Fans were enraged as details emerged that winning contestant Anand Aravindakshan already featured as a playback singer for at least ten songs in Indian films, including songs in Tamil films. Actor and filmmaker,

Lakshmy Ramakrishnan Lakshmy Ramakrishnan is an Indian actress, director and philanthropist. She made her debut in the Malayalam film ''Chakkara Muthu'' (2006), and has since appeared primarily in supporting roles in Tamil films. Personal life Lakshmy was born an ...

wrote on Facebook that "this cannot have happened without the channel’s knowledge" and that "unethical practices have resulted in victimising not just Anand, but other participants and, of course, the audience, who spend time and money by sending SMSes to support talented youngsters." As the show has a reputation of finding budding singing talent and giving them the exposure and platform to enter the Indian film industry, social media users criticised the channel of not being upfront about the fact that a professional singer had participated as a contestant in the show and accused the channel of wrongdoing. According to media reports, the controversy arose after a Facebook post accused TV channel Star Vijay of flouting its competition rules, and hiding the contestant's true identity from the public. Star Vijay responded to the accusations in printed media to assert that it did not hide the contestant's identity and that the current rules permitted existing playback singers to participate in the competition. Officials from the channel declared they see no need to disclose information to the public. The show's permanent judge and playback singer

also suggested it was unnecessary to rake up the past as the contestant won the most votes. Accusations of wrongdoing were also made against the winning contestant, who refuted the allegations and expressed his dismay in a Facebook post. Viewers and social media users acknowledged that although the information was accessible on the contestant's Facebook and some other sites as refuted by the contestant, the channel probably should have explicitly stated the information to be fair, having failed to do so in at least 200 of its episodes. Social media users also noted that Star Vijay hid most of the show's episodes from audience scrutiny during the season; although almost all episodes from the season were made available for viewing-on-demand at the time of the finale, various episodes from its past seasons and spin-off seasons have been hidden from the public.

References

External links

* {{STAR Vijay TV shows Star Vijay original programming 2015 Tamil-language television series debuts 2015 Tamil-language television seasons Tamil-language singing talent shows Tamil-language reality television series Tamil-language television shows 2016 Tamil-language television series endings Television shows set in Tamil Nadu Airtel Super Singer seasons