You won’t be able to resist the music of Bachna Ae Haseeno

The album opens simply with delicately plucked acoustic guitar strings and a soulful female voice wafting over it. KK makes his entry soon after and its evident immediately that the song – Khuda Jaane – is right up his street.

The female voice is of Shilpa Rao and it complements KK’s perfectly. KK hits the high notes with effortless ease as usual and Shilpa handles the lower range gracefully. This romantic song picturised on Ranbir Kapoor and Deepika Padukone and shot in different locales in Italy perfectly sets up the rest of the album with its intricate – but understated – arrangement that keeps the voices and Anvita Dutt Guptan’s lyrics on centre stage.

Khuda Jaane is followed by Lucky Boy brought to life by the interesting combination of Sunidhi Chauhan, Hard Kaur and Raja Hassan. In a way you could say that this ode to a future lover is a contemporary version of the DDLJ classic Mere Khwabon Mein Jo Aaye, but whereas that song was anchored in a lilting melody, Lucky Boy is a peppy and seductive number centred on a thumping dance floor beat. And the lyrics make it clear that the boy who falls into this girl’s arms will be a lucky boy indeed.
And why not, for this concert item song shot in Italy has been picturised on the sizzling Bipasha Basu.

Lucky Ali and Shreya Ghosal take charge with the next track Aahista Aahista. It’s a proclamation of first love and who better than these two singers to announce it to the world, giving voice to the thoughts of the characters of Ranbir and Minnisha. The music directors find the perfect balance between electronic sounds and beats and the singers’ voices to create a unique romantic number, which has incidentally, been shot in Switzerland.

Jogi Mahi is typically Sukhwinder Singh with some help from music director Shekhar Ravjiani as well as Himani Kapoor on the vocals. Jogi Mahi is a Punjabi celebratory song, a love ballad depicting the story of Mahi and Jogi (legendary lovers like Heer-Ranjha) picturised on Minnisha, Ranbir and Kunal Kapoor. It is also a screenplay based song, taking the story forward even as it enchants you with its rhythms. The dholak, percussions and Indian strings play a significant part in making this sounding and almost smelling like the wet earth of the Punjabi heartland.

Small Town Girl which follows Jogi Mahi is, as the title suggests, a celebration of the small town girl but also a warning that she is not to be taken lightly. This bouncy number again takes the screenplay forward and finds a rightful place in a long line of celebrated Hindi movie songs where the heroine is teased. Shankar Mahadevan wows with his perfect articulation of English, Hindi and Punjabi lyrics of this song picturised on Ranbir and Bipasha and has been shot in Rome.

A faster paced remix of the opening track Khuda Jaane follows before the album closes with its piece de resistance – the title song which is an updating of the classic Kishore Kumar number Bachna Ae Haseeno

It gives one a jolt of pleasure to hear the evergreen number in Kishore da’s original voice but now supplemented with those of his own son, Sumit Kumar, and Vishal Dadlani. As rousing as ever, but with a modern day zing, Bachna Ae Haseeno has everything you would expect in a song where Vishal & Shekhar get to pay tribute to their idol R.D.Burman.
And the fact that the original was picturised on Rishi Kapoor and the re-imaging is picturised on Rishi’s son, Ranbir, along with the rest of the cast, just adds to the magic.  

Which is why we say that the music of Bachna Ae Haseeno will appeal not just to haseeno’s but to boys and men; not just to the young but to the old and young at heart; not just to the contemporary, but those who love their music served up with a dash of nostalgia; not just to the lovers of pop and rock or Bollywood alone, but to all those who love music.