Celebrated singer and music director Shibani Kashyap is not very happy with the various reality music talent shows (Indian Idol 3, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, Amul Star Voice of India etc.) doing the rounds the on television these days. She says that there is nothing different being offered and accused that all the shows are just clones of American Idol.

According to Shibani, the Indian Idol purposely seems to bring in bad participants (at least in the early rounds) and watching them makes people a complete fools of them! On the contrary, She says that watching such silly shows makes for good for some reality entertainment.

Nevertheless, the Sajna re girl says that these shows are a hit with a section of the audience as most of the Indian's love rags-to-riches stories.

Shibani, who is looking forward to her tracks of Sanjay Gupta's upcoming flick Shootout at Lokhandwala, feels a wee bit amused watching the so-called cat fights between the Indian Idol judges – Annu Malik, Javed Akhtar, Alisha Chinai and Udit Narayan. "Some of them clearly look staged. What really annoys me is that they seem so loud and make belief."

Shibani further adds, "I still remember Fame Gurukul where the parameters of choosing the contestants made no sense. Hence people like Qazi Toukir ended up winning. Let's hope that the current talent shows don't fall into the same trap".

Shibani, who shot to fame with Ho Gayi Hai Mohabbat in 1998, seems to be disappointed when beautiful faces rather than the singing abilities, training in music and gharana are given more importance by these talent show judges. "I understand that today you do need good looking singers (because of visuals), but all this can be taken care of later. Right now you need to find just raw talent, period."

These days the singer and music director of Zinda Hoon Main is not too happy with the Sa Re Ga Ma Pa contestants as well.

"What I can say is that these contestants only face better than the Indian Idol trash. Most of these Sa Re... guys too seem to be clones of the singers who number they are crooning. Would it not be better, if they tried to add some originality like the American Idol singer Sanjaya Malakar?

Did he not sweep away the judges with his stylish renditions? Most American Idol contestants also have huge imperfections, but they try to add their personality (changing the note a bit, improvise, etc.) to the song, which makes them interesting to watch and hear," opines Shibani before signing it off. - (SAMPURN)