Watch Sunlay
Plays here via youtube-nocookie.com — nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.
The Story Behind Sunlay
Sunlay was Asim Azhar's first single, released in 2013 when he was sixteen, before the covers he had been posting online turned into a recording career. The lyric video went up in May of that year and the official music video followed on 1 September, directed by Khayyam and produced for the screen by Charlie Dyess, with the music produced by Kazman Productions and the release carrying the CMMNWLTH stamp. Where it landed says as much as the song does: YouTube was blocked in Pakistan at the time, so the video went out first on Azhar's Facebook page, a detour the upload itself still notes. The whole three and a half minutes hang on the title, one word of pleading, sung in a voice that had not yet lost the thinness of a teenager's, and that unguardedness is most of the appeal.
Meaning & Translation
Sunlay is Urdu for "listen", in the familiar imperative form of the verb sunna. It is not the polite register you would use with a stranger, it is the word you reach for with someone close enough to be exasperated by, and that makes the title an address rather than a description. A singer who says sunlay is not cataloguing what he feels, he is asking to be given a hearing, and asking sits in a more exposed position than declaring does. English offers no single word that does the same work: listen is flat, just listen to me is closer, and both give up the intimacy the Urdu form carries without having to explain itself.
Details
Artists & Credits
- Asim Azhar singer
- Kazman Productions producer