An age for everything

It has been almost two years since I got the Smule account and started singing. 

As of now, most of my friends agree on one thing. I have consistantly improved week on week by singing one song a week.

This has continued to this day. The song selections are not my choice though. They are all duets, but cover different times from the 1960's to 2010's and different music directors, singers, song genres over the years. 

Some are simple lyrically and crisp with no hidden meanings, some are risque and some are downright NSFW.. if you are in a workplace where folks speak Tamil that is.

While the compliments for the singing improvements keep coming on one side, there is also the comments on the songs themselves.

There is one repeated theme from family and extended family. Sing songs that are appropriate for your age.. aka Bhajans and devotional songs. It is no secret that I turned 50 a couple of months ago and this "age appropritateness" always makes me go "where is this written down?".. "who made these rules?".. at what age is singing what appropriate? 

I am not going against this logic blindly. Just trying to understand the categories and what age is good for what..

For example..

0-3 years: Nursery Rhymes

3-5 years : just Rhymes and kids songs. (think Rafi songs like Baby Beluga or Down by the Bay, when I write this)

5-15 years : Carnatic training (geethams varnams keerthanams , I guess if you are lucky enough to get trained?)

15-25 years : Movie songs (one has to sing them as youth or when else can you sing love songs?)

25-40 ? : Mature movie songs? 

40-50 ? : slokams?

50+ : Bhajans only?

60+ : stop singing ? as it is no longer age appropriate?

These questions have no good answers but have summarized the general suggested direction with ? 

Not sure if this is the generic thought process across Tamil families .. any stats collected in this regard would be nice to analyze!

If you actually analyze some of the slokams or devotional hymns that are in praise of the female goddesses, they describe the goddesses and their beauty with unparalleled metaphors that would make the modern day movie song lyricists look like nursery rhyme writers.. not that there is anything wrong with writing nursery rhymes!

As per this unknown age guidance, I am to sing devotional songs only for the next ten years and taper off to recitation mode only. Maybe this is written down somewhere and I am not aware of the source. Maybe it is the right thing to do. Who knows?

For now, I am just going with the flow and singing the song that is taught each week. Some songs suit my voice. Some suit my voice and pitch (preferably C# to D!.. now that I know what those mean). Some songs also work with my ability to show some emotion in the voice (Sadder the better ?!) 

I do put warnings when posting the songs if they have some double meanings.

If any of you would like to share your thoughts on the age appropriateness of select music, I would definitely be interested in compiling it and updating this post!

In the meantime, one song a week. You can check it out under my smule id sundar72ps.