Although Pritam is widely criticized for his plagiaristic ventures, one has to admit that he has good taste even when it comes to lifting! Unlike Anu Malik, this man lifts some of the most exotic songs from around the world and most of those lifted tunes have become big time chartbusters. Though I do not approve of plagiarism, I do admire Pritam for the wide range of world music that he listens to, being a world music aficionado myself. His sense of instrumentation has also been quite impressive. And hence it was with great hopes that I started off with the playlist of the movie Aa Dekhen Zara, composed by Pritam and Gourav Dasgupta. And here is what I found.
Mohabbat Aapse
A brilliant number from Pritam, and easily the best song in the soundtrack. The song starts with a haunting melody on the flute and progresses towards an excellent rendition by Akriti Kakkar. This female has been impressive right from her first big hit that was the title song of Johnny Gaddar. The instrumentation on the whole has been spot on. However if you listen to this track first and then build up your expectations about the rest of the album, you are in for a big letdown coz the other songs hardly match up to this standard.
Gazab
Gazab is the second and last song by Pritam in this album, and is just the regular item number stuff, sung by Sunidhi Chauhan and Shaan. Barring one or two sections that are worth notice, the song as such is rather uninteresting. Nevertheless this song is boundto get some feet tapping in parties. Wonder why the lyricist Irshad Kamil chose to include the lines from the legendary 1961 hit Do Hanson Ka Joda (Gazab Bhayo Rama Zulam Bhayo Re) of the movie Ganga Jamuna in this song. The tune of that section is also quite similar to the 1961 version, just a slight tweaking of a couple of notes. One good thing that can be said about this song is that it is way better than its remix that is done by DJ Sanj!! He has only succeeded in including a lot of unnecessary instrumentation adding to the noise factor of the song.
Aa Dekhen Zara
Aa Dekhen Zara sees Neil Nitin Mukesh take up the mantle of his father and grandfather, and I must say he has done a decent job of it. But barring this fact, there is nothing very remarkable about the song. The song doesn’t come anywhere near the 1981 classic by R D Burman. At many places it seemed like the actual song was being played in the background as a voice that sounded like Kishore Kumar’s was discernible apart from Neil’s voice. The dialogues by Sunaina in the second interlude sounded rather irritating. On the whole a safely avoidable song. The composer Gourav Dasgupta has done a more creative job with the lounge mix which is sung by Dibyendu Mukherjee and Shweta Vijay. However, a lounge version is not something that you would associate with a song like Aa Dekhen Zara which has for years been perceived as a high energy song. Hence, to cut a long story short, this song too disappoints.
Rock the Party
This is the best work of Gourav in this album, though that is not to say this is an exceptional song. Sunidhi delivers the song in style accompanied by Shweta Vijay. This song does remind one of many other disco songs in the past (It’s the Time to Disco for one), but the instrumentation in this song and the lounge version of Aa Dekhen Zara do say that Gourav Dasgupta is not without talent. The wailing at the start of the song and the synthesized voice in the second interlude could have been avoided.
Power
Dibyendu sounds better singing the rock-ish Power than the previous one. But he could have done better without the attempted growls in between. The album hits rock bottom with this song and I didn’t feel in the mood to listen to the Club mix as I assumed it couldn’t have been much better than its original.
To sum up, when compared with the soundtrack of Neil Nitin Mukesh’s previous outing that was Johnny Gaddaar, this album falls way below expectations, considering the fact that this movie also falls under the same genre. Hope the movie at least doesn’t follow suit.
