Pritam came under a lot of flak recently after Bollywood’s original chocolate boy and current William Shatner, Rishi Kapoor, included him in his vituperation over the performance, for lack of a better word, of Jagga Jasoos. While the elder Kapoor minced no words, Pritam also had his chops in another basket, Imtiaz Ali’s Jab Harry Met Sejal (note that only the male protagonist’s name remains unchanged from the Hollywood title it’s totally not inspired by). And so we loathe to butcher some more, but:
Radha
Sunidhi Chauhan, as befits the track name, is the belle of this ball, which transitions from the folk outdoors to the club inside, missing scarce a beat. Shahid Mallya evokes the country (the genre, not India) while Chauhan steers the travel tale to more urban destination. That’s about all you can say about this song.
Beech Beech Mein
And then comes the man himself, Arijit Singh, squeezing himself into the midst of the soundtrack. India’s favourite vocalist (apart from perhaps at Galaxy Apartments), backed by Pritam’s pastiche of sound, explores the limits of his pitch and hits high notes that would make Maroon Five’s Adam Levine take note. Again juxtaposing more traditional Indian elements with electronic club beats, the song manages to get away with being catchy without much originality. Again, thank God for Sunidhi Chauhan.
Safar
That Spanish guitar Bollywood discovered thanks to Zindagi Na Milegi Doobara, like the sauce in a dish, covers a multitude of sins. In this instance, accompanied by an emphatic bassline and Arijit mining that gravelly part of his voice, la guitar is more an accent than disguise, and the music just flows. Like a journey through the reportedly rolling plains of Andalusia (Gangetic plains have too many toll stops). Given the movie is about a tour guide, this is, to quote Goldilocks, just right, and our favorite track of the album.
Butterfly
And then you get pulled right back to the mustard fields of apna Desh. Put on an ornamental pagdi and just Bhangra off with this number, vocalised by Dev Negi, Sunidhi Chauhan, Aman Trikha and the Nooran Sisters. There’s just a hint of electric underlying the folksy, perhaps a reminder that we live in India, and not Bhaarat; it works.
Hawayein
Hmmm. Forgive us, a moment of Deja Vu happened, recalling a time when NASA’s worst employee of the month (he did just abandon his project) Mohan Bhargava was traveling to the hinterlands, his Swades, as it were, in his attempt to create the most emotionally-charged ‘putting in a lightbulb’ template ever. It isn’t AR Rahman, but it’s the closest you can get.
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