Music Review Mr X

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

Canada: Free $30 Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Free $30 Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…Expectations:

High! After all, it is a Vikram Bhatt film, and also stars Emraan Hashmi, so the music must do more than just 'lips' service to the film.

Music:

The songs are alright at the superficial level. Gone are the days when films had distinctive scores with songs that could not possibly fit into any other film or be imagined elsewhere as a package.

The lyrics are also getting increasingly fake, weirdly-metaphor-ed (to use an ungrammatical term, just like many of the songs with their complete and 'trendy' disdain for grammar and flow) and Ankit Tiwari is recycling his past limited compositions and singing in the same edgily-breathless way that is supposed to denote passion, but proves nothing other than a lack of vocal finesse and variety.

In his first composition that he also sings, 'Tu jo hain', Ankit goes completely into the trite, which by now is an unlistenable zone, though the song may work at the charts for a couple of weeks like a familiar generic dish at a new restaurant (this new film)! The lyrics (Mohnish Raza) start on a bizarre note with the line 'Teri saanson ki saans mein / Jo hoon to main hoon': could someone please explain what 'saanson ki saans' means?

The syndrome persists in 'Saad shukrana', again composed and sung by Ankit Tiwari, with nothing to say in the done-a-zillion-times-before lyrics (Manoj Muntashir).

'Alif se' sees Neeti Mohan contributing a distinct melodious element with her resonant and sureela voice, while Ankit (as composer and co-singer) keeps to his high octaves. The lyrics here (Abhendra Kumar Upadhyay) are the usual wannabe-impressive kind of incomprehensible Urdu ('Alif se aipar tu / Yahaan har sheh par tu / Khuda pe naqsh hai tera / Ishq ka paikar tu').

None of these three songs have the slightest pretentious claim to contain anything fresh or meaningful, and Ankit seems to be going the Meet Bros-Yo Yo-Mithoon way wherein the music moves within the same straitjacket of similar notes, vocal tenors and 50 repeated words.

Co-composer Jeet Gannguli impresses in 'Mr X', a meaningful-in-context song written by Rashmi Singh. Mili Nair sings deftly, and Mahesh Bhatt repeating 'You can call me X…Mr X' is efficient.

But the Jeet-Rashmi collaboration gets into stereotyped zone in the two version 'Teri khushboo' (one version by Arijit Singh and the other by Palak Muchhal). The lyrics and sentiments of hope expressed and the flavour of the tune are a direct hark-back to their songs in Citylights, so much so that this song seems to be written for the earlier film and finally used here. However, the genuine melody of the composition helps it linger for a while even as we forget most of the remaining songs.

Overall:

We know that so many filmmakers and even lyricists, composers and singers are toeing the line of the Bhatt-Pritam school that began with Gangster nine years back as well as the Bhatt-Mithoon-Ankit template after Aashiqui 2. But that's precisely an additional but compulsory reason why the Bhatts must reinvent their music content – fast! And with effect from yesterday!

This is a score where the production values too lack any ambition. Also, Rashmi Singh apart, the lyricists here lack the finesse of the Sufi-meets-deeply meaningful-yet-simple verse of Sayeed Quadri, who ruled in the Bhatt banner in the past. Not a single song of the depth of Jism, Saaya, Murder or Gangster can be heard here.

Our Pick:

Mr X, Teri khushboo, Tu jo hain (only for the charts)

Music: Ankit Tiwari & Jeet Gannguly
Lyrics: Mohnish Raza, Rashmi Singh, Manoj Muntashir & Abhendra Kumar Upadhyay
Music Label: Sony Music

Article written by staff at Bollywood Hungama. Read more

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