Oct 26, 2001 04:00 PM
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Subhash Ghai for the first time shifts gears from his tried and tested music directors Laxmikant Pyarelal to Nadeem Shravan. And it seems a good move.
The album gets a good start with ‘Do Dil Mil Rahe Hain’. Acoustic guitar strumming one set of notes and the hum of a pre-recorded keyboard bass keeps the ear soothed and relaxed to perfection. Add a Kumar Sanu voice to the words penned by Anand Bakshi and you have a winner.
‘Meri Mehbooba’ is another good number – slow and melodious. The song has good music, great instrumentals and good vocalists except when Alka Yagnik does a take on Beatles with ‘Oh Bloody, Oh Blooda’ in the middle of the song. Eliminate that, and you have a chart topper.
‘Diwana Dil’ has a good build up – Shankar Mahadevan is brilliant with his background pakad . Hema Sardesai has a great opera’sque pitch. It’s very difficult to touch those notes in an Indian song- with quintessential Indian rhythms and not sound jarring- or painfully shrill.
On the other hand, ‘I Love India’ has ridiculous lyrics at the very start which spoil the effect of what could have otherwise turned out to be decent number. The track sounds like a not-so- heady concoction of a nursery rhyme, a composition by a New York orchestra and a jugalbandi between a drum, a sitar and a dufli. Don’t fall over yourself to grab a listen. The other version is a better rendition by Kavita Krishnamurthy.
‘Jahan Piya Wahan Main’ is ethnic and sounds like a few of the sounds Subhash Ghai has used in some of his earlier films in the build up. Then suddenly the music changes over to a rather nice beat, but Chitra’s piercing voice seems a bad choice, for a number so mild. One must give due credit though to Nadeem Shravan, for the music switches are very innovative.
The Title Music initially sounds like a mammoth music band warming up for a fiery performance. And that isn’t always a pleasing sound. You get impatient waiting for some trace of the music- then amidst birds chirping Sapna Awasthi sings pure folk followed by the piano rendition of ‘Meri Mehbooba’. It’s essentially a very confused amalgamation. At the end of it all you wish the band had practiced elsewhere!
‘My First Day In U.S.A’ sounds as American as Subhash Ghai can get. The one thing that strikes the ear is Hema Sardesai with just the right accent. Not pretentious and definitely not the born-in-India-confused-in-America kind of sound. But bad music doesn’t make this good stuff to listen to.
‘Nahi Hona Tha’ starts off with a qawwali. A qawwali with a hint of the I Love India rhythm creeping in. Hema Sardesai is quite good with the folk vocals.
All said and done, this isn’t bad music, with an absolutely outstanding opening track that is Kumar Sanu’s best till date! A decent pick-up.
