The changing nature of Hindi film music has been one of the boastful trends of this ten. Standing here, nowadays, immediately, at the cigarette goal of 2019, the estimate of an album itself seems to be on shaky ground, with an changeable future. The gradual digital coup d’etat that has happened in this decade has meant that the way music is produced, distributed and consumed is more singles-driven. Add to that, a creative bankruptcy in the music diligence and a new, corrupted working system that has contributed to it.
The list includes soundtracks that adhere to the more traditional mind of the Hindi movie album, an approach that is falling out of manner, or show a modern direction of doing it. There were rules that needed to be set up — as all lists must. For exercise, a cap of maximum two entries for Amit Trivedi, who reasonably a lot dominated the first base half of the ‘ 10s. The particular Mentions at the end don ’ metric ton include albums which didn ’ t make it to the chief list, but that came up as references.
here are the 10 best albums of the 2010s, in the chronological club of their free .
1. Udaan (2010)
Composer: Amit Trivedi
Lyricist: Amitabh Bhattacharya
The smack of youth is spread through the songs of Udaan : the narrative of a male child who broke free from his abusive beget. The opening strains of “ Kahaani ( Aankhon Ke Pardo Mein ) ”, evening before the guitars and the vocal harmonies have kicked in, sound like the awaken of a awareness. The mint-fresh lyrics of “ Geet ( Kuchh Naya Toh Zaroor Hai ) ”, in which Amitabh Bhattacharya turns a song about a night out with friends into something beautiful : Jebo mein hum raatey liye ghooma kare, he writes ( We roam around with nights in our pockets ). The overall sound of the album, that resembles that of a bright rock dance band from first year in college. In “ Udaan ( Nadi Mein Talab Hai ) ” and “ Aazaadiyan ( Pairon Ki Beriyan ) ” we have the earliest examples of what would become a Trivedi peculiarity : the indie spirited pop-rock hymn ending with well-earned crescendo, a dazzle sitar hera, an electric guitar riff there. There is a term we sometimes like to use to describe a raw engender of Hindi films : ‘ Hindie ’. The songs of Udaan feel ‘ Hindie ’. Despite the ‘ rock-band ’ fathom, it has an earthiness that ’ sulfur tied to the contiguous populace of the protagonist, who grows up in Jamshedpur and writes poems in Hindi. “ Naav ( Chadhti Lehre Laang Na Paye ) ” is precisely the kind of indian folk-rock song you ’ five hundred expect K Mohan to sing. And “ Motu Master ( Isski Maa Agar Isse ), ‘ the boarding-school song ’, a batchmate is subjected to innocent bullying through imaginative pun, guest starring a shayari by Anurag Kashyap. The death chase is an instrumental : the “ Udaan Theme ”, with its melancholy piano and violin, which is an exercise of Trivedi ’ s endowment for theme pieces. Udaan confirmed what Dev D ( 2009 ) had signalled : that in Trivedi and Bhattacharya we had found the most original composer-lyricist duet of this era. Choosing it over Lootera, the early Vikramaditya Motwane film, wasn ’ triiodothyronine easily. But Udaan is more significant .
2. Guzaarish (2011)
Composer: Sanjay Leela Bhansali
Lyricist: Turaz, Vibhu Puri
Is there another amerind film director whose films ’ songs bear the stomp of his personality deoxyadenosine monophosphate much as Sanjay Leela Bhansali ? Grand, personal productions full of baroque details, steeped in the custom of Hindi film sangeet. even when Bhansali had others composing for him — Ismal Darbar in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam ( 1999 ) and Devdas ( 2002 ) ; Monty Sharma in Black ( 2005 ) and Saawariya ( 2007 ) ; if we leave out his beginning film Khamoshi ( 1996 ) — his auteurist traits were out there. But there ’ s something liberate in the songs of Guzaarish — since which he has taken up the reins of composing — that give the impression of a film maker ultimately unshackling himself from the effect of having to depend on person else to execute what inside music he had held but couldn ’ metric ton express all these years. The style track feels like a license to go all out, indulge, do any the hell he wants. He lets a four note verse stretch over four and a one-half minutes — Bas itni si tumse guzaarish hai, Yeh jo baarish hai dekho na, Usme teri baahon mein mar jaaoon, Bas itni si, chhoti si, khwaahish hai, laid out from the position of the supporter — a once-great sorcerer now reduced to his wheelchair in his sign of the zodiac in an antediluvian Goa. Is the style cut spokesperson of the wholly album ? There is the popular but generic “ Udi ”. “ Tera Zikr Hai ” is great but it falls in a Bhansali template : the ‘ spiritual sleep together song ’ ( “ Thode Badmash ”, “ Laal Ishq ”, “ Aayat ” ). But I find myself more draw to the pensive, dreamy “ Jaane Kiske Khwab ” and “ Kehna Sakoon ”, and the melody-filled “ Saiba ” and “ Sau Gram Zindagi ”. Bhansali — constantly a supporter of singers — returns to some of his former collaborators such as KK and Shankar Mahadevan, equally well as working with new talents such as Harshdeep Kaur and Vibha Joshi. He lets Shail Hada — another Bhansali discovery and the star-singer of Saawariya — leave imprints of his vocal dexterity all through the album. There is a translation of “ What a fantastic World ” by Hrithik Roshan. Guzaarish international relations and security network ’ t a arrant album, but it feels special, more idiosyncratic, and closer to his heart than his belated works like Raam Leela ( 2013 ), Bajirao Mastani ( 2015 ) and Padmaavat ( 2018 ) .
3. Delhi Belly (2011)
Composer: Ram Sampath
Lyricist: Amitabh Bhattacharya, Munna Dhiman, Akshat Verma
How do you make songs for an R-rated, potty mouthed drollery like Delhi Belly ? about every sung in this album by Ram Sampath is a parody, poking fun at something. “ Switty Tera Pyaar Chaida ”, “ Nakkadwale Disco ”, “ Bedardi Raja ”, “ I Hate You Like I love You ”, “ Ja Chudail ” and “ Saigal Blues ” are parodies of musical genres, lampooning the template-like slot of a traditional Hindi film album : the bhangra standard, the qawwali, the token number ; the item number featuring a ace, the grief sung, and a KL Saigal song respectively. The parodying extends to the lyrics as well : for example, aimed at the Delhi-sized male chauvinism ( Mundeyaan Wali Ego Chhad Ke, Kudiyaan Waang Main, Khul Ke Roya; written by Dhiman ) in “ Switty Tera Pyaar Chaida ”. And with Aamir Khan as the producer, who besides happens to be the uncle of Imran Khan, one of the leads in the film, could it be that “ Bhaag DK Bose ” ( Daddy Mujhse bola tu Galti Hai Meri; lyrics by Bhattacharya ) is a riff on Papa kehte hai bada naam karega ? Like the film, the album has a great, slenderly grown up sense of humor. Of course none of this ‘ drollery music ’ would ’ ve worked if it didn ’ thymine sound so bang-up. Seven years on, the blissed-out vibration of “ Sehgal Blues ”, with its balmy slide guitars, are still irresistible ; and “ Bhaag DK Bose ” is arsenic close as always .
4. Rockstar (2011)
Composer: AR Rahman
Lyricist: Irshad Kamil
Rockstar could be the album I ’ ve heard the most number of times in my life. personal reasons aside, I was taken by how ‘ cinematic ’ it felt. No real-life musician would ever sound like Jordan : a wide-eyed desi from Pitampura, Delhi, who becomes a rock candy ‘ north peal musician blessed by the Sufi saint-poets after he sets out to undergo a grief to become a real artist. It ’ s a fantasia of AR Rahman, Irshad Kamil and Imtiaz Ali — one of the big composer, lyricist, director partnerships in the past ten ( Highway ; Tamasha ). “ Nadaan Parinde ” plays out like rock opera with crazy electric guitars and freak-outs, calmed down by lines of the Amir Khusrao. Another big stadium numeral, the Pink Floyd-tinged “ Jo Bhi Main ” has an elate loopiness — Maine Yeh Bhi socha hai aksar, tu bhi independent bhi sabhi hai sheeshe…Kamil goes. The acoustic guitars arrive like a divine treatment in “ Kun Faya Kun ” — a naath performed at the Nizamuddin dargah, where Mohit Chauhan reaches singing peak and Jordan tastes nirvana. “ Phir Se Ud Chala ” plays like a stream-of-consciousness smear in Jordan ’ sulfur head — it begins with a Pahari folk music choir and goes into a techno capture. Each song is intensely tied to the state of mind of the supporter. The songs of Rockstar communicated some of the mysterious thoughts at the heart of the film better than the film itself. Or you could say without the songs there is no film .
5. Gangs of Wasseypur (2012)
Composer: Sneha Khanwalkar
Lyrics: Varun Grover
Give Sneha Khanwalkar anything and she ’ five hundred turn it into something exciting. In “ Jiya Tu Bihar Ke Lala ”, the first track of Anurag Kashyap ’ s bipartite gangster epic set in Bihar, she turns the purportedly lowbrow into something overwhelmingly hip and browbeat, giving Bhojpuri star Manoj Tiwari ’ s distinctive tattle style a hale newfangled musical context by fusing it with shards of electronica. In “ Kala Rey ”, a lead from part II, she turns the sound of alloy beating against coal into percussion section. It ’ s a harebrained album — with 27 songs — that hasn ’ t lost its power to shock. Songs such as “ Womaniya ”, “ Hunter ”, “ Keh Ke Lunga ” are an built-in region of the movie ’ randomness condition as an clamant advanced classic. Khanwalkar and Varun Grover — who supplies appropriately playful lyrics, tapping into the idiosyncratic phonetics of the Bihari speech and creates clever phrases ( O Womaniya ; Frustiyaaon nahi Moora ) — travelled extensively in the UP-Bihar belt for two years while working on it ; the composer tied went to the Caribbeans to get a first-hand experience for the Chutney music-inspired “ Hunter ”. The stream system in the music diligence doesn ’ t seem to be conducive for such a project. And it ’ s possibly telling that Khanwalkar didn ’ t have a proper album since Wasseypur until last year ’ second Manto .
6. Barfi (2012)
Composer: Pritam
Lyricist: Swanand Kirkire, Sayeed Qadri, Ashish Pandit
Like the warmheartedness of some crimson wine on a cold christmas night in a mound place that has retained its Colonial character, Pritam ’ s soundtrack for Anurag Basu ’ s Barfi is climate. The composer, who had a bite of a reinvention in this ten, comes up with a sound to match Basu ’ s mum cinema inspired tragicomedy set in a quaint vision of Darjeeling in the 70s — “ accordion-backed tunes and lazy-Sunday vocals suggesting french provincial music as performed by Cliff Richards ”, said one critic. And the song that ’ s the closest to the description is possibly “ Main Kya Karoon ”, sing by Nikhil Paul George, with its bossa nova percussions and cha-cha cycle. The style cut, whistle by Mohit Chauhan and with lyrics by Swanand Kirkire, is a delightful fur ball of folderal — giving us a glimpse of Pritam ’ s bent for gibberish we would see late in Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani and Jagga Jasoos. There ’ second change in mood once the action in the film shifts to Calcutta. We have three versions of a ghazal. Arijit Singh ’ s “ Phir Le Aya Dil ” is better than the ones by Rekha Bhardwaj and Shafqat Amanat Ali. It has a nice, spaced-out arrangement and Singh gets conclude to getting the nuances of the whistle dash of a ghazal right. Do I have a darling ? possibly “ Aashiyan ”, sing with near perfection by Shreya Ghoshal, which is so evocative of Salil Chowdhury that it could be described as Salil Chowdhury, if Salil Chowdhury was a writing style .
7. Bombay Velvet (2015)
Composer: Amit Trivedi
Lyricist: Amitabh Bhattacharya
“ Aam Hindustani ”, the first song of Bombay Velvet, begins with a three-and-a-half moment prelude — a bravura display of each member of the big set jazz ensemble : trumpets, trombones, sax, drums, sea bass, piano — before the vocals ( Shefali Alvares ) kick in. Most songs these days don ’ thyroxine tied last that hanker. The 14-song album is that much of an aberration. Bombay Velvet feels dateless, although it is identical much a atavist to a Jazz era Bombay. It ’ s not good ‘ authentic ’ in terms of the kind of classical wind that must have played in such nightclubs as Bombay Velvet in the ’ 50s and ’ 60s — the venue in the film in which the gangster, Johnny Balraj, falls in love with the singer, Rosie Noronha, it ’ mho besides true to the films of the era, the kind of sing and lyric writing that went around in those films ; and in imagining a legal that combines these elements, it creates a style of its own. Neeti Mohan, in character as Nina Simone and Geeta Dutt rolled into one, delivers a performance for the ages, injecting american samoa much sensuality as Hindustaniyat in her spill the beans ( Just look out for the bits in “ Mohabbat Buri Bimari ” where she hiccups and hmms and does all these little song gestures and you ’ ll know what I ’ m talking about ). Bhattacharya skillfully weaves together Hindi and Urdu poetry of the earned run average, scandal ( “ Sylvia ” ) and hot-blooded romanticism ( “ Naak pe Gussa ”, “ Mohabbat Buri Bimari ” ), even as he reflects on the social inequities of the time. Angst and pessimism mixes with beauty of language. ‘ Ek anaar hai, sau bimaar hai ; Is usool pe chalta bazaar hai ; Tere aage mahal alishaan hai, barium darwaaze pe ek darbaan hai, ’ broods Papon in “ Darbaan ” for the disenchant hero of the film. This is Trivedi and Bhattacharya ’ s magnum musical composition, there is no two ways about that. But its commercial failure seems to have broken something within the composer, none of whose subsequent exploit has matched up to anything angstrom extraordinary as this .
8. Detective Byomkesh Bakshy (2015)
Composer: Multiple artistes
Dibakar Banerjee assembled the country ’ s coolest indie acts for his Byomkesh-on-acid take on the Bengali detective history — all under the consecrate banner of Yash Raj Films. The music — five of the seven tracks are cleverly rework versions of already existing songs — is a stylistic choice, less to do with plot than the graphic-novel tactile property of the film. And so far they are not faineant recreations. Lyrics had been rewritten and the musical arrangement made more ‘ cinematic ’. Like the big percussions in the beginning of “ Calcutta Kiss ” by the electro-funk couple Madboy/Mink, with its swing time, cabaret and slick disco beats ; the deed holds the clue to a crucial plat point ( hint : it ’ s the name of a paan masala stigmatize ). “ Bachke Bakshy ” — an master, put together by Sneha Khanwalkar — plays out like the many voices inside the protagonist ’ second head, flipping from ragged, sweaty rap to Gregorian chant-like refrain to seductive capture. part of the fun of the soundtrack is the anachronic nature of it, with funk, rap and nu-metal clash against the fix of of a pulpy Calcutta during World War II, when dhoti-clad gents ride trams and hand-pulled jinrikisha. “ Byomkesh in Love ” — in which the electro-pop pleasures of BLEK Jam ’ south earlier track meets a thumri spill the beans by Usri Banerjee — is used in the extremist slo-mo action fit following the big revelation, as though a music video made by a cinephile. Bejoy Nambiar ’ mho Shaitan ( 2011 ) can be credited as the album that showed a way to bridge the break between India ’ south indie music scene and Bollywood, never the best of bedfellows ; but it calm had the Malayali composer Prashant Pillai doing some of the independent tracks. Detective Byomkesh Bakshy took it a notch higher by going all the way .
9. Mirzya (2016)
Composer: Shankar Ehsaan Loy
Lyricist: Gulzar
One of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy ’ s most hearty, complete albums in the last 10 years. For this modern claim on the Mirza-Sahiban caption, the composers : the partake cultural history that binds the indian subcontinent : the depths of the North West Frontier, from Balochistan to Peshawar to Afghanistan. With Gulzar as the lyricist and guiding light, the composers create a soundtrack that draws from the interconnected, frequently overlapping, tapestry of Hindustani authoritative, Bhakti and Sufi and the spiritual music of the nomads of the North West frontier. It ’ s a odds and ends of singers from both sides of the margin : Daler Mehndi, Mame Khan, Nooran sisters, Kaushiki Chakraborty, K Mohan, Mahadevan himself ; the Sufi artistes Sain Zahoor and Akhtar Chanal Zahri ( who you may have hear and seen in Coke Studio, Pakistan ). Zahri does these hypnotic incantations in “ Chakora ”, a Rajasthani folk number with raunchy undertones that ’ s given the electronic shock absorber treatment ; and Zahoor ’ s voice-from-the-sky tattle begins “ Teen Gawah Hain Ishq Ke ”, an acoustic guitar based number which has beautiful harmonies by the Salvation Choir ; both feature of speech in the colossal title racetrack — besides starring Mehndi and the Noorans — which unfolds like a musical kaleidoscope. Mahadevan himself has sung two, “ Aave Re Hitchki ” and “ Doli Re Doli ”, songs I like going binding to because of the ambiences they evoke : unhorse Hindustani classical recitals, as though performed under dim lights, sung with a certain ease .
10. Gully Boy (2019)
Composer: Multiple artistes
Music supervisor: Ankur Tewari
No one in truth listens to albums in club of sequence anymore. But Gully Boy puts some remember behind it. The first track, “ Asli Hip Hop ”, is both introducing the hearer to ‘ real pelvis hop ’ and the film ’ second champion, Murad, taking pamper steps as a rapper, his beat easy and fundamental. Through friendship with mentor MC Sher ( “ Mere Gully Mein ” ), lessons from his intemperate liveliness ( “ Doori ” ) and the allure of a fresh world ( “ Kab Se Kab Tak ” ), he reaches his vertex in “ Apna Time Ayega ”, a desirable rival for the hymn of the decade. ‘ Shabdo ka Jwala ’. By the time we reach “ India +91 ”, the last track, not starring Murad at all, the rhythm have become complex ; the languages Gujarati, Punjabi and Marathi, apart from Hindi ; the rap debauched ; and the hearer, hopefully, more in tune with Mumbai ’ s metro hip-hop picture, which is the backdrop of the Zoya Akhtar movie. A lot has been written about Gully Boy ’ mho music and I don ’ thymine want to repeat. But I ’ d like to point out how it brought back lip-synch to the Hindi film sieve after a long prison term, but by making Ranveer Singh rap for himself. And it ’ s that rare album that had two protest songs. Dub Sharma ’ s “ Jingostan ”, which may sound like a dystopian India but actually is about the confront, uses beatboxing extensively. Sharma and rapper DIVINE ‘ s “ Azaadi ”, a rally-cry against “ bhukhmari and bhedbhaav ”, uses a sample — if handily selected — version of the motto by Kanhaiya Kumar from the student protests in Delhi in 2016. I just wish it had more presence in the film, but what a all right album .
Special Mentions:
Band Baaja Baarat ( 2010 )
Shor in the City ( 2010 )
Agneepath ( 2012 )
Ishaqzaade ( 2012 )
Aiyyaa ( 2012 )
Haider ( 2014 )
Ae Dil Hai Mushkil ( 2016 )
Laila-Majnu ( 2018 )
Mard ko Dard Nahi hota ( 2019 )
