MUSIC REVIEW : CHENNAI EXPRESS

Rohit Shetty’s movies never boast of path breaking music. However, this time he teams up with Shahrukh Khan. Let us see what Vishal and Shekhar give us in the music department.

1234 – GET ON THE DANCE FLOOR – Staying true to the title of the film, the song starts with some tamil rendition by Hamsika Iyer. We are also treated to some tamil rap portions done by Sricharan. To put it bluntly, the song is highly irritating. Following the path taken by umpteen item songs, this one too progresses on the same lines. With a catchy background beat, we are treated to Amitabh Bhattacharya’s disappointing lyrics. (Is it really him?)

Vishal Dadlani sings one of his career’s worst songs. He is totally out of tune and doesn’t fit in at all in the song. Even the video hardly does any justice to the song. Overall, nothing is right about this song. Please delete it if you have downloaded it. Period.

TERA RASTAA is another disappointing track. With Amitabh Bhattacharya singing this one, I was expecting a soulful romantic number. But alas! The song turns out to be a bad mishmash of fast beats and a tepid and boring tune. I listened to this song almost ten times, trying very hard to like it, but I just couldn’t!

READY STEADY PO has a huge ensemble of singers. In contrast to the promising line up, the song falls short of expectations. The tune is no doubt catchy, but you get a feeling of having heard the tune somewhere else. There is a gross lack of novelty in the overall melody and the arrangements. A video might salvage this song, but as a lone audio track, this one is just average.

What saves the soundtrack of Chennai Express are the rest of the saongs.

CHENNAI EXPRESS marks the bollywood return of S.P Balasubramanyam, and he totally rocks! We are treated to some lovely rap consisting of SRK, SPB, Rohit Shetty and Vishal-shekhar sung by S.P sir himself. The song is a full on dhamaal one, and clearly S.P sir had a ball while singing it. He is joined by Jonita Gandhi who makes her bollywood debut. Jonita, who is a brilliant singer and whose songs can be found on youtube’s channel named “88 Keys” doesn’t get too much scope to showcase her talent, but she is just fine.

The album’s best song is “TITLI”. Sung by Chinmayi and Gopi Sundar, this one is totally brilliant. It has a very lovely and serene feel to it, reminding us of the kind of romantic songs Rahman created back in the 1990’s for Pukar, One two ka four, etc. nice to see Vishal Shekhar coming up with such lovely compositions. The lead singers do a fab job. This one gets a thumbs up from me. Totally recommended.

The song also has a dubstep version which is awesome too. It is mixed well and sounds very good on the earphones.

The last song to appear is the mashup, and it is like any other mashup. Yawn! Nothing new here! It sounds more of a second version of the title song. Avoidable!

OVERALL, the first thing which strikes you on listening to the soundtrack of “Chennai express” is that it doesn’t at all sound like a Rohit shetty film soundtrack, and believe me, that is a good thing. Vishal Shekhar stay true to the film’s mood, however the album falls short of the expectations which are generally attached to a Vishal Shekhar album. Two songs standout, but the rest of the songs are plain average or downright bad.

However, going by the irritating over promotion of the film, the songs might just go on to become charbusters. That still won’t make it a qualitatively good album though.

MY RATINGS – 7 / 10