Melodies, memories, movie clips and playlists filled the timelines on social media as the nation mourned the passing of Sripathi Panditaradhyula Balasubrahmanyam on Friday.
On Twitter, #SPBalasubramaniam, Om Shanti, RIP SPB were the top trends from the time the news of his death was announced by the private hospital in Chennai. While celebrities and movie personalities paid tributes to the versatile singer who sang for an unknown actor called Laxmikanth (Ye divilos virisina parijatamo) as well as Salman Khan (Aja shaam honey ayi), it was left to social media to show how much the singer was loved.
One social media user tweeted: “SPB sang 41,230 songs in total. Even if one sang 1 song a day all days of the year with no breaks it would take 113 years to sing all his songs.” Another twitter user made a different calculation: “74 years * 365 days = 27010 days He sang more than 40k songs in his career Averaging his songs with no of days he lived = 1.5 song per day. We may miss your physical appearance but you will be there forever in our heart.”
“There is no death for an artist. His voice would continue to stay immortal in this world. Till music exists, his songs would occupy our playlist,” wrote another social media user summing up the mood of the nation.
“A singer with one of the most soulful voices, who was a part of my childhood watching singing shows is no more! Just when I thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse,” wrote Mithun Shenoy on the microblogging site about the singer who groomed singers with a popular TV show.
SPB and SP Balasubrahmanyam were also one of the top trending searches on Google as the news of his becoming critical on Thursday night triggered a bunch of rumours about his health.
