Spanish Beauty / A Beautiful Wife

EXPECTATIONS Ok, now one can’t be expecting much from the soundtrack of a film which is a dubbed version of a Spanish movie and features songs that are a mix of some new and some heard-before non-film tracks. Add to that, the fact that one is not even sure whether the songs would really feature in the film in background (seems improbable) or have been placed together just to create a music album only makes it further tricky for Spanish Beauty to find much reach for itself. Nevertheless, one plays on this album which has three tracks by Aravind-Shankar and a couple of old numbers by Atif Aslam.

MUSIC Omer Nadeem, a new entrant on the Bollywood musical scene, croons ‘Thum Zara’. A soft track and almost laidback in its appeal, this Dhiraj B. Jha is a love song with a touch of sadness to it. Moving at a slow pace, it comes pretty close to the kind of tracks that Atif Aslam is known for. A decent track, the kind of music style adapted here is on the same lines as that of MM Kreem. Towards the end of the album, Karthik comes behind the mike for a ‘remix version’ of the same song which turns out to be just about okay. ‘I Wanna Have Sex‘ – Now can there be anything more direct than this? Half a decade back when Akshay Kumar-Priyanka Chopra starrer Aitraaz had featured a song ‘I Wanna make love to you’, there was an outrage. However, it seems there won’t be much noise this time around for this Chev & Shaheen Iqbal written track because: a) audience has become much more tolerant and b) the song will anyways go unnoticed due to its small reach. A fusion lounge track with Chev, Rita and Cha-Cha coming together to bring in a mix of sensuality and racy rhythm, this Aravind-Shankar composition just about passes muster without quite igniting the heat. The song which follows next carries the mood of the ones that preceded it and maintains a fusion flavour of the album. Sung by Devika, ‘Kothay Uttay’ has a Punjabi traditional touch to it with a bit of sort rock thrown in. Written by Shahi & Adeel, the song bears the mood of being non-filmy and seemingly brought out of a private album. Yet another slow paced song which conveys the sadness of the protagonist who is missing her lover, ‘Kothay Uttay – Remix’ is yet another passable track. There is some life that comes to the album in the form of Atif Aslam’s super hit chartbuster ‘Doorie’ which is played till date despite being around for years. However, those who like it now would definitely be having this song in their collection anyways. Same holds good for ‘Maula’ which is an old track of Atif and has been popular as well amongst his fan base. Credit it to the instant recall value but it won’t be wrong to say that these are the two tracks that immediately perk up the album.

OVERALL First and foremost, the music of Spanish Beauty isn’t the kind that one expects from a regular Hindi film soundtrack. While the songs don’t really belong to ‘skip them now’ variety, they aren’t instant chartbusters either that would make one go and pick up the album pronto. Add to that the fact that the album has only seen a scattered arrival on stands and that too less than week before the release of the film means that Spanish Beauty doesn’t stand a chance to make much of an impression.

OUR PICK(S) Doorie, Maula