Venki
I agree with most of the points you raised here . I am not intending that musical skills has diminished. I was just implying the consistency of his music to connect with his fans. The "songs" is not a measure of anyone's musical skills , it's the justice one does to elevate the movie. Raja excelled in both in a certain period of time. Now it's flashes of brilliance here and there .
To put it in raja's words , we have energy in our body and we have a dominant frequency . Raja's music has a frequency, and when they match, we have a resonant frequency. Many people associate the reason they love raja's music because they have so many memories attached to it. Partly maybe true , scientifically the frequencies matched and we fell in love with him .
I cannot say for sure that people now have different frequencies , so they cannot identify with raja's . There is also a case that raja doesn't deliver the same frequencies you used to. Because when songs like what you have mentioned , "avuna" , eduru choostunve" come up, we rejoice , because that connects with us. "Avuna" was in my loop for so many days and it still is. But there are other songs I completely fail to connect with.
I agree with you raja does justice to his movies he is given with. That's why I said he is not challenged these days. For ex. NEP was the last "big" movie as love as its core story, where is the theme ? . I could watch movies like idayam even without songs . Forget idayam , even crap movies like "thendrale ennai thodu " has a theme I could listen for days without food. My point is he can still deliver. Those days , he didn't need anyone , but these days I wish somebody needs to remind him what he is capable of.
Raja has touched every genre, that is popular even these days. For ex, look at what my present fav combo Santosh-Narayan and Pradeep are doing, all they do is present the kind of songs Raja attempted in " EeraVizhi kaviangal" with songs like " pazhaiya sogangal", " en ganam", " thendral ithai " with present day acoustics. Look how they sound . Was are any song that failed , when raja chose acoustic guitar to lead a song? I doubt it. I wish somebody would push him with great scripts ...