Music Review Heartless

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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

Shekhar Suman has acted in great musicals like Utsav, Nache Mayuri and Tridev in the '80s. This is his maiden production and so we do have limited expectations.

Music:

The album opens with the Ash King-Arunima Bhattacharya track 'Mashooqana', which is just about pleasant, without being distinguished in any fashion. The singing is more like crooning rather than full-throated and we get a superficial romantic track. The standard compositional construction and routine lyrics add to the average nature of the track. The remix of this song, with Sanjoy Deb added to the voices, continues with the common delusion that a track becomes pub-fodder just by adding some beats.

Arijit Singh is his usual self in 'Main Dhoondne Ko Zamaane Mein', whose lyrics (Arafat Mehmood) try to be smart rather than deep and are modelled clearly to fit the tune. Again clichéd and heard-before, the song, despite Arijit's gasps (he should truly learn better breath control as a frontline playback singer), is decidedly a better listen than the first, and the populism in both the lyrics and the musical phrasing may make it a passing 'hit'. The music, composition- as well as orchestration-wise, shows a clear resemblance to contemporary music from the Vishesh stable of the Bhatts. The reprise that ends the soundtrack is at the same level.

KK separates the men from the boys as he takes on 'Soniye' with practiced smoothness. Though the composition has nothing new to offer, it is a warm melody, rendered warmly by a singer who is known to elevate ordinary songs to extraordinary levels. It is the commonplace lyrics (Seema Saini) that keep this one from reaching to the next level despite the singer. KK shows that you do not have to yell to impress, or be gimmicky to express!

Fuzon, the Pak pop group, score music for the raag-suffused 'Ishq Khuda'. The song appeals because of its ethnic structure, and a clean, balanced sound typical of the better bands in the genre. Khurram Iqbal is a good vocalist, negotiating the compositional curves with reach shriller octaves. In the orchestration, I loved the small role played by the tabla, used cleverly for a tantalizing effect.

'What A Feeling' (Mohit Chauhan-Sukanya Ghosh) revisits the '70s-'80s in its orchestral feel, and the nursery rhyme-like flow needed better vocals, by which I actually mean some hard work put in by the music composer. As it stands, it sounds like an olde-worlde English melody on which Hindi words have been juxtaposed.

'Heartless' (Mohit Chauhan-Aniruddh Bhola-Suzanne D'Mello) again has a vintage English flavour – but this time it is mixed with the '70s kind of Hindi film composition to come out a winner. As in most songs on the album, the lyrics (Seema Saini) pull down the song's caliber, which displays some fine piano work and nice singing. Mohit stands out in the three voices heard on the track.

'Thanks Brother' is sung, sing-song fashion, by the real-life father-son team of Shekhar Suman and Adhyayan Suman. A guitar-based melody, it sounds alright when the track is on.

Overall:

Though the sound is well-done, the lyrics are very heard-before and mediocre, while the music is alright without any ambitions to excel. Wish makers of small films realize that they must pay importance to good music, which can rescue their film from anonymity whenever there are no big names involved.

Our Pick:

'Soniye', 'Ishq Khuda', 'Heartless'

Music: Gaurav Dagaonkar & Fuzon
Lyrics: Arafat Mehmood, Seema Saini, S.K. Khalish & Shekhar Suman
Music Label: T-Series

Article written by staff at Bollywood Hungama. Read more