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World Music Day was celebrated on June 21. The occasion celebrates Music the world over, but all those who have admired and treasured Hindi Film Music as the world’s greatest ‘Pop’ music have been, for long I dare say, in a blue funk. It is no longer what it is used to be even less than a decade back.
Pop means Popular and in sheer numbers, Hindi Film Music, along with its global admirers of all ages, was the biggest one around, and can regain its stature and importance again. Yes, there are hopes, but corrections need to be done.
The Key Clarification
“Old is Gold, new is trash.” Sadly, most people believe in this dictum. But this is decidedly untrue about our film music. In each era, the music has reflected tastes and trends of that time, and the lyrics the social scenarios. Hindi Film Music has long imbibed musical influences from not just national but international domains, absorbed quickly the technological changes and given popular forms to traditional Indian and foreign music and poetry like bhajan, qawwali, ghazal, folk and Western genres including jazz, pop, cabaret and more.
As veteran filmmaker Sudhir Mishra (Chameli et al) once told a rookie scribe at a film convention when she asked why Hindi films could not eschew absurd forms like song and dance: “That is Indian cinema’s USP. And please note that some of the finest poetry and music made since the 20th century has been created for cinema!”
It is said that one likes and identifies best with music from one’s birth to teenage years, simply because we are the most receptive, evolving and carefree souls in that near two decades of time. This explains why every generation, if close-minded, thinks that the NextGen songs are inferior.
But music is subjective!
So how does one be objective about this? Why do I (and so many listeners and aficionados of all ages) decry the lack of substance, appeal and lasting factor in the majority of music today? There must be…sorry, IS!… a rectifiable deficiency in music today if every generation, including present music creators, feel the same way, right?
Please do not forget that film songs are—at least, should be!—created for a film situation. A song is supposed to enhance it, be a commercial aid to the movie and sell also on its own, besides leaving an imprint, possibly forever, on the listener to cherish. It is the only part of a film that you take home, right?
In this study, let me attempt to sort out and home in on what has actually gone wrong and how it can possibly be corrected.
1: Lyrics
Just as a film’s base is the script, a song lives on through its lyrics. This I something on which everyone from Naushad to A.R. Rahman and beyond agree. These are—quality-wise—in very short supply. Songs now are rarely situational. They are generic—party songs, songs about alcohol, songs that objectify girls, real and fake Sufi combined with (often not genuine) Rock, Pop and more, repetitious verse on love or description of lovers, an occasional song of separation and so on.
To take examples of classics, can Haaye haaye yeh majboori (Roti Kapada Aur Makaan) or Jaane kyoon log pyaar karte hain (Dil Chahta Hai) be interchanged with any other song in any other film even in similar situations, if such were there? But we see a clear interchangeability in many a song today.
A related factor remains the ‘excessive overdose’ of Punjabi, the dual adjectives stressing the quantum. This is nothing but a gold rush as vacuous lyrics can work transiently, aided by a catchy hook.
And yes, Hindi may be similar to Punjabi in parts, but then so are Marathi, Gujarati and other languages. How can we allow Punjabi with its major differences from Hindi and expect people to appreciate and remember the lyrics across the country? As a novelty, individual words, phrases and sentences have been always used over the decades, obviously placed so that we can guess the meaning (Tainu Rab da vaasta from Kucche Dhaage and more), but now 60 to 75 percent and, in some cases, 100 percent of a song is in Punjabi!
What’s more, today’s leading lyricist Irshad Kamil told me way back in 2005 that the Punjabi we had been hearing until then (a fraction of the quantity we hear now!) was often faulty in grammar and even in male/female and singular/plural matters. One can imagine what is being dished out two decades down!
Plus the same old descriptive phrases are being used even in Hindi, with specific aspects like eyes, lips and more described sans freshness or imagination.
A final blow in this department is crediting one song to two and even three lyricists! How can a single expression of romance / philosophy or anything else be “created” by more than one soul?! Worse, most such songs have trivial words! Like the horrendous Naachenge saari raat taang uthaake (We will dance all right with our legs up in the air!) from the 2016 Housefull 3 sung by five singers and written by—hold several breaths!— Sameer Sen, Sajid-Farhad, Mamta Sharma and Sanjeev Chaturvedi!
I am a firm believer in the undoubted fact that today’s best lyricists—Irshad Kamil, Amitabh Bhattacharya, Kumaar, Manoj Muntashir, Prasoon Joshi, Kausar Munir, Sayeed Quadri or Swanand Kirkire—are excellent writers with original thoughts, but they too are constrained by market forces.
And I simply wonder what kind of market forces are these that, at best, want a song merely as an audiovisual filler that will be replaced by another similarly vacuous song in the following week’s release?
All this has led to an extended and unwarranted dependence on “re-creations”, reworks of time-tested melodies, even less than a decade old, with add-on verse in many cases, like Kumaar’s original additions to Saara zamana haseenon ka diwana (the 1981 Yaarana classic) in the 2017 Kaabil, which even got a gender flip!
Many such re-creations, at the lyrical level, are done quite imaginatively, but what strikes me is how perfectly many a classic song sits pat on a completely different situation in a newer film. Examples? Inquilab (1984)’s chartbuster Abhimanyu chakravyuha mein phas gaya hai tu in Crazxy (2025) or Chori chori yoon jab ho aankhen chaar from the 1988 Paap Ki Duniya in 2026’s Tu Yaa Main.
In any case, when money is all-important, re-creations are an obvious alternative. Just add beats, put in some fresh lyrics and rhythms, get crooners and Voila! ‘Re-)create’ a new ‘old’ song!
Never mind if tomorrow a song like Mungda (Inkaar / 1977) will now be credited, instead of to the original creators—singer Usha Mangeshkar, lyricist Majrooh Sultanpuri and composer Rajesh Roshan—to the film Total Dhamaal (2019) and to the re-creation’s singers Jyotica Tangri, Shaan and Subhro J. Ganguly, word-spinner Kunwar Juneja and music (re)makers Gourov-Roshin?
To be concluded…
