Song And The City

Devesh Sharma Chronicles the Highs and Lows of Hindi Film Music Released This Year So Far...

An album consisting of multiple lyricists and composers has been the trend these past few years. It has continued in 2019 as well. Not that the formula hasn’t worked. Gully Boy, for instance, had more than 50 artistes collaborating on the album and yet emerged as one of the most versatile albums so far. Giving company to Gully Boy’s experimental nature were the soundtracks of films like Mard Ko Dard Nahi Hota and Judgementall Hai Kya. Both albums were influenced by RD Burman’s music. Melody came back with a bang. Kabir Singh has emerged as the most popular mainstream album of the year yet. Malaal, which had Sanjay Leela Bhansali as the main music composer, had some lovely songs, which didn’t become popular because the film tanked at the box-office. Action films such as Uri: The Surgical Strike, Manikarnika: The Queen Of Jhansi and Kesari surprisingly had nice romantic numbers. So did socially-relevant films like Article 15 and Super 30. While A R Rahman hasn’t had a release so far, Pritam showcased his hold over the masses with Kalank. Vishal-Shekhar too got into the fray with Student Of The Year 2 and Bharat, the latter proving more popular. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy too had Manikarnika and sated listeners with classical-based compositions. A breakdown on how the year fared musically so far...

Uri: The Surgical Strike had music by Shashwat Sachdev, who got to compose an entire soundtrack after Phillauri (2017). The five-song album remained true to the theme of the film. The one hatke song, Beh chala, sung by Yasser Desai and Shashwat and written by Raj Shekhar stood out. The guitarbased orchestration was minimal, letting the evocative words take over.