Strangely enough, when Sajid Wajid get Palash Sen to croon the catchy Salma-O-Salma, beyond the rhythmic backgrounds, there’s a strong Euphoria element that seeps in. The title song is frivolous and boring, while the usually ebullient Neeraj Shridhar seems to have a gag on his mouth while singing Pal yeh aane wala. That gag is [...]

Rahul Ram’s Aarambh is powerful, both in the arrangements and in the incredible selection of words that work with their rich intonation, while Shilpa Rao towers over the soulfully arranged Aisi sazaa with her sonorous voice. Beedo and Ranaji have everything in place to sustain the Visha Bharadwaj’esque folk genre – Rekha Bharadwaj and catchy [...]

Manzaraat works solely due to Shilpa Rao’s vocals and not so much for Justin Uday’s music. The composing duo also give us the spritely Chaal apni and the deep but largely flat Allah hoo. Their serene version of Gulon mein, with Mohit Chauhan’s vocals is listenable, but pales in comparison to Sandesh Shandilya’s retuning of [...]

Jai Ho, Rahman! Academy Award Winner, Best Original Score, Slumdog Millionaire Academy Award Winner, Best Song – Jai Ho, Slumdog Millionaire

<!–adsense–> I’m outraged at Aadesh Shrivastava brainlessly expressing his outrage at Bachchan’s portrayal in Slumdog Millionaire. So, here’s a quote-to-quote response, besides those incredible comments he’s been getting in the page linked above! “How dare you degrade our national icon Amitabh Bachchan?” Meaning: “I need to say these things about the B so that I [...]

Ilayaraja pitches in with cool vocals in the hep Adada vaa, the highlight of which is that persistent flute piece! Sutta suriyana carries Yuvan’s Pattiyal sound, but is punchy enough. Kaatrukkullae could have reached new heights had it been sung by another singer – Yuvan spoils this fascinatingly arranged tune. Neethaane has Yuvan working his [...]

Out of Pritam’s two tracks, Gazab is mind-bogglingly dumb and typical but the man redeems his form with Aakriti Kakkar’s Mohobbat aapse, a sparkling melody, tuned, arranged and rendered damn well! Gourav Dasgupta gets the rest of the soundtrack, and he simply makes mincemeat of it. The re-creation of Pancham’s title song is a full-on [...]

You have Shankar Ehsaan Loy, but the 13B’s makers think Indrajit ‘Tubby’ Sharma and Parikshit Parik can do a better instrumental theme? The theme is however clever – begins serenely, builds an eerily loud momentum, gets cheerful and ends on a mildly eerie note. But, it’s the trio that rocks. Karthik’s super smooth Bade se [...]

The decidedly item’ish Qaatilaana may be bang on for the skimpily clad woman on the CD, but for the soundtrack, it’s terribly jaded and boring – Sunidhi sleepwalking through yet another item song. With their rock bearings, Sooni sooni and Stoneman can best be described as moderately interesting. Then there are six appropriately and imaginatively [...]

Bappa Lahiri’s solo composing debut sees him aping Paki rock in Sufi – surprisingly well. This may well have been a Pritam track, but to give credit where it’s due, Bappa imbibes the usual elements and integrates them neatly. Tennu le is staid Brit hip-hop, the kind peddled by Stereo Nation while the fairly decent [...]