She is for popular taste but is against mindless music.

Asha is here for the musical nite to be held at the Sardar Patel Stadium on January 30.

Talking about the declining standards of the Hindi film music the veteran singer felt that the passing away of the great music directors and poet-lyricists as one of the primary reasons behind the absence of melody in today's film songs.

The quality of songs depends on lyricists, singers and music composers, she said.

Asha Bhonsle also cited the public demand as another important reason behind the soulless songs being projected by the film industry. ``Lyricists and musicians will stop churning out such songs if they are rejected by the music lovers,'' she observed.

The celebrated singer, who gave a number of sizzling and soulful numbers like Parde mein rehne do.., Chura liya hai tumne jo dil ko.., Damma ro dam.. during her long career spanning 55 years, however, saw no dichotomy in her singing pop numbers also.

``Pop music is nothing but popular music,'' Asha said giving her cute dimpled smile. ``Would you call Janam Samjha Karo... which, I sang for a recently released film, a pop number?,'' She asked adding in the same vein that she preferred to sing only those songs which had scope for melody and which, she thought, would be liked by the people.

To a query, Asha said the singers like her would be forgotten if they did not cater to the popular demand. ``Moreover, a singer is without option as he or she is bound to sing the songs which are written by lyricists and composed by musicians''.

When asked why the younger generation was turning away from the Indian music and preferring the western one Asha Bhonsle said the peoples' preference to music was directly related to their age. ``Children and teen-agers like fast music but as they grow old they start preferring songs based on classical music.'' She was, however, of strong opinion that old film songs would never be forgotten. A significant proof of the timelessness of these songs was that the children and teen-agers while participating in TV Antaksharis prefer to sing them.

Asha, who pioneered the fast numbers in Hindi films, said she was fond of classical music and named performers like Ravi Shanker and Vilayat Husain as her favourite.

On cross-border music relationship, Asha Bhonsle has said that the respect with which Pakistani artists are treated in India is not always reciprocated by the Pakistani people to Indian artist performing there. Giving her own example she said, ``sometime back a Pakistani TV channel had recorded a song in my voice but when it was telecast I found that my voice had been replaced with someone else's.''

The legendary singer came out with these revelations while commenting on the Shiv Sena Sena's stand against the Indo-Pak test series.

She, however, refused to comment on the demonstrations the Shiv Sainiks had recently organised outside the residence of the veteran actor Dilip Kumar to protest against his negative comments about the Shiv Sena's demand that the screening of Deepa Mehta's film `Fire' be banned.