Sinisterness is the dominant theme of Don 2’s score. Not that I was expecting anything else from this kind of a movie, but Don had two songs that provided respite from that mood. In Don 2, everything is dark, even the waltz at the end takes a diversion. But more on that at the end of the review.
Anusha Mani and Vishal Dadlani kick off the soundtrack with a spunky techno-based Zaraa Dil Ko Thaam Lo Shankar Ehsaan Loy build around the classic Don hook. The contrasting combo of Anusha’s husky voice and the rawness of Vishal’s vocals works well. The bongo drum (or is it something else?) beats that underlie Dushman Mera give it a very RDB feel. Sunitha Sarathy handles the vocals here with Shankar Mahadevan. Sunitha does a neat job as usual, and the song seems to work fine till the latter half where a vocal version of the second interlude of Don 1 title song appears. Mistake. Sunitha also does a cameo in the primarily instrumental theme, The King Is Back, which (again) rehashes all the loops we had heard in the first movie with some more techno thrown in. And if you felt that you didn’t hear enough of Don 1 yet, the composers present you the title song itself in a renewed form, KK replacing Shaan on the vocals. With due respect to KK, Shaan sounded much better singing this. And yes, there is a remix as well, that features the “Don Ko Pakadna Mushkil Hi Nahi..” dialogue in a seemingly infinite loop! The pick of the album is Usha Uthup’s Hai Ye Maaya, which though once again replete with the Don signature elements, works for the imaginative jazzy touches. And for the imposing voice of the lady. The remix was too techno for my liking. The Don Waltz starts off decently, following a regular waltz template, until after about a minute and a half where the curse of Don strikes this song well! But that said, Caralisa Monteiro sounds awesome doing that humming. The only track where the Don loop doesn’t appear is Aa Raha Hoon, but that is probably only coz there is nothing very musical about it, SRK rendering a dialogue about his return.
Scratch what I said initially. DON is the dominant theme of Don 2’s score. Yes, the Don template does have an allure about it, but SEL stretch that allure a bit too thin by using it in every song of the soundtrack. Bad move.
Music Aloud Rating: 5.5/10
Top Recos: Hai Ye Maaya, Zaraa Dil Ko Thaam Lo
