Shayan Roy, an instagram content creator, is known for his fun reels on life in general — and his videos never cease to make us laugh. Two of his recent reels took the internet by storm and for a good reason. The videos revolve around American singer Billie Eilish and rapper Doja Cat, and tell us “what if they were Bengalis”. Both are hilarious takes on their trending songs, Bad Guy and Get Into It (Yuh) respectively. While Shayan’s version of Bad Guy has got around 1.4M views, the latter has more than 637K views. My Kolkata spoke to Shayan to find out how he came up with this concept and executed the production of these songs.
Both your videos — Doja Cat and Billie Eilish are Bengalis — have gone viral. What kind of reactions have you been getting so far?
The reception has been incredible. I’m so glad I started making Bengali content because the community is really supportive and passionate. I also find it astounding that whenever I create a Bengali content, a large chunk of people appreciate it and they aren’t even Bengalis!
How did you conceptualise something like this?
This idea was originally executed by Ryan Prakash on TikTok, as Tamil versions of the famous singers. While I didn't understand a word of those videos, I thought the approach would be funnier if I did the same in Bengali.
Both the videos highlight Bengali idiosyncrasies so well. How easy or difficult was it to write the lyrics?
I think writing lyrics is super easy, something I didn’t know before. It does make sense because I’m talking about things that I've grown up with, and looking at them from a humorous angle comes quite naturally to me.
The mixing of the audio for the videos are on point. How did you achieve that?
I tried to emulate the artistes’ voices to the best of my abilities, but I think choosing songs that I’m super familiar with also helped. Being a vocalist, I am very particular about different vocal portions and harmonies, so that was definitely a fun part of the process.
Do you love ilish? What about bhaat, ghum and the quintessential pashbalish?
I absolutely love ilish. In fact, anything with shorshe (mustard) in it, is godsend for me. I think bhaat, ghum and my trustworthy paashbalish are all connected to a hearty meal with ilish maachh. They’re all a huge part of my Bengali identity.