Yuvan has not done much for me either, except the odd Paruthi Veeran or not to forget, in case you have forgotten, Nanda. Mun Paniyaa was as dew-fresh as you could get. Somehow, his other scores dont hold up barring a slightly okay Pattiyal here and a Mounam Pesiyadhe there. When he is bad, he is really god-awful bad, and when he is good, he is just, uh, good maybe that’s the reason!
A couple of news-bits which might be of interest to you:
1. The third progeny of Raja, Bhavadharini, did come out with a lovely album in Amirtham. You must listen to it.
2. Karthik Raja has the recently released Chakravyuham which has recevied good reviews for the music – admittedly, these are from my 4-5 contacts who I think are the only KR fans in the world apart from me but I trust them so I can stick my neck out here for Chakravyuham

Ravi K: Sample or no sample, when it comes to easy listening, I still respond better to HJ’s music than to Yuvan’s (though the latter, if he puts his mind to it, dores come up with the odd Paruthi Veeran). If I were to take someone from the house of Raja, I’d rather listen to Karthik, though he doesn’t do much these days.

Back to songs in Indian films. It is such a strange thing for a character to start singing that it takes a particularly good director to include songs in a film and not have it break the immersion in a film. In most films whenever the song starts I am aware again for a moment that I’m watching a movie.

That’s why I appreciate Guru Dutt’s lack of musical interludes (with a few exceptions). There is no break between dialogue and song lyrics, which doesn’t give you time to think, “Hey, a song is starting.” It also helped that the songs flowed from the narrative.

Coming to HJ, he is beginning to sound as though his bag of tricks are coming to an end. I do love some of his scores (with emphasis on the bass guitar, synth or otherewise) but his BGM skills are highly questionable.

I agree with Deepauk on Yuvan. He is highly inconsistent and I agree he has really improved in BGM scoring. If you ask me about sheer composing skills, I would probably rate Karthik Raja higher, though he has his negatives too with excessive dependence on electronica (in his case, doesn’t sound that great).

Ultimately, I guess the bar is set too high for these guys by the “big 3″ and unknowingly, we will keep evaluating their music relatively (which probably doesn’t do too much justice to them).

The issue with Yuvan like what Deepak mentioned is his inconsitency. Probably it could also be because he gets involved with a lot of projects. But definetely his BGMs are simply superb and is much better than Rahmans too.

Vidyasagar i feel is the most underrated music director we have in the South today. His music for the Malayalam movies are fabulous; but I guess in Tamil he is subjected to a lot of masalas. And even though he had churned out a lot of hits than his counterparts, his name is never recalled or mentioned among the top music directors.

Rangan: Yuvan definitely scores in the BGM department over HJ (It is probably in the genes.). Mounam Pesiyadhe is a favorite album of mine and the BGM was incredible. The Meera Jasmine theme in Sandaikozhi was excellent, almost on par with Sita’s score in Aan Paavam (and that is huuuuuuuuge praise). His inconsistency is his issue, Billa was largely unimpressive except for Seval Kodi. Kattradhu thamizh was salvaged by his dad’s rendition of “paravaiye” and Satham Podathey was quite a dud. But he’ll get there, I have hope.