10. Udaan Nadi Mein Talab Hai (Udaan)
Music & Lyrics by Amit Trivedi and Amitabh Bhattacharya
Amit Trivedi i.e. our generation’s AR Rahman started off the decade with a soundtrack as searingly original as the film that accompanied it. And while choosing a favorite is hard, the title track is the one I found myself revisiting. Starting off with a haunting church organ, the song quickly shifts gears oscillating steadily between arena rock, alt. rock and the kind of New Wave dream pop that bands like Wild Nothing do so well.
09. Shuddh Desi Romance (Shuddh Desi Romance)
Music & Lyrics by Sachin-Jigar
Innovative Bollywood dance music took a nose dive this past decade with much-maligned 90s covers cluttering the iTunes charts, but the title track off of Shuddh Desi Romance broke the mold with its wildly disparate musical elements – Rajasthani folk, island Calypso and a sort of unapologetic musical theater camp that is sorely missing in today’s hip, more “grounded” Bollywood dance floor fillers.
08. Da Da Dasse (Udta Punjab)
Music & Lyrics by Amit Trivedi and Shellee
Udta Punjab’s genre-agnostic soundtrack contains many a glorious cut, none headier than Da Da Dasse which features then-newcomer, Kanika Kapoor, sing to Amit Trivedi’s cascading, psychedelic synths with a detached otherness.
07. Panchi Ud Gaya (Newton)
Music & Lyrics by Naren Chandavarkar, Benedict Taylor and Varun Grover
The presence of Neil Young looms over this remorseful, tender slice of campfire rock.
06. Ikk Kudi (Udta Punjab)
Music & Lyrics by Amit Trivedi and Shiv Kumar Batalvi
Another Udta Punjab soundtrack highlight, this Nineties Quiet Storm-channeling ballad sees the underappreciated Shahid Mallya animating legendary poet, Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s, words with a beautiful but wounded vocal line.
05. Meri Laila Laila (Laila Majnu)
Music & Lyrics by Joi Barua and Irshad Kamil
I first caught whiff of Assamese musician, Joi Barua’s a musical prowess on Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara’s rousing Dil Dhadakne Do which transcended the narrow confines of pop rock. Here, Barua enlists Pakistani singer, Atif Aslam, and Jyotica Tangri (Sacred Games’ disco siren) to repeat the same trick albeit with Kashmiri folk rock. Aslam imbues the track with his signature, impassioned vocals while Tangri sweetens the overarching romantic aura with a sense of wistful abandon. The end result is nothing short of intoxicating.
04. Tum Hi Ho (Aashiqui 2)
Music & Lyrics by: Mithoon
Incredibly populist yes but for good reason – Tum Hi Ho’s beauty lies in its gorgeously spare structure and heartfelt prose. It introduced India to Arijit Singh, a master songbird whose name will inevitably be etched alongside the greatest – Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangeshkar in the books. Lady GaGa’s Shallow (the A Star Is Born equivalent) may have scaled to the top of the Billboard charts and nabbed an Oscar, but it won’t likely be played in weddings, sangeets, birthdays and funerals the world over for decades to come the way Tum Hi Ho will. Songs like this, which cross generations, continents and novelty and fad genres, deserve to be recognized and cosseted.
03. Aapna Time Aayega (Gully Boy)
Music & Lyrics by Divine, Dub Sharma and Ankur Tiwari
Arguably the most resonant battle cry of today’s disenfranchised desi youth, Aapna Time Aayega is urgent and powerful. It sees Ranveer Singh (of all people) expertly spitting bars penned by OG Gully Boy, Divine, to arresting, percussion-heavy cadences. It’s a song that changed the Bollywood music landscape and coerced the Indian public to finally acknowledge and appreciate Hindi hip hop.
02. Bismil (Haider)
Music & Lyrics by Vishal Bharadwaj and Gulzar
To give sonic justice to one of the most sacred texts in history, Bill Shakespeare’s Hamlet, is a feat in and of itself. Yet Vishal Bharadwaj, a more accomplished maestro than an auteur in my opinion, did just that fusing Middle Eastern and Kashmiri musical influences with Gulzar’s prosaic poetry to conjure up something intriguing and off-kilter that is equal parts Algerian Raï and Luc Plamondon grandiosity.
01. Ishaqzaade (Ishaqzaade)
Music & Lyrics by Amit Trivedi and Amitabh Bhattacharya
There are songs that you can hear ad infinitum and they will still give you the same goosebump-inducing experience they did when you first heard them. Ishaqzaade, the title track off of Yash Raj’s film on doomed interfaith lovers, is one such song. Atmospheric electronica gives way to the most melancholic French Horn and then, like sunshine busting through dark clouds, comes Javed Ali’s voice – towering yet plaintive. No Bollywood ballad released this past decade is as excruciatingly beautiful.
