Music Review: Hasee Toh Phasee

‘Shake it like Shammi’ has similar problems, but for Benny Dayal’s energetic vocals. Designed as an ode to Bollywood’s original dancing star Shammi Kapoor, the song is fashioned around the tropes of a Kapoor-Mohammad Rafi song, with similar sounding tunes and the breathless punctuations.

Where the duo of Vishal-Shekhar salvages (kind of) the album is with the more soulful numbers that come in the second-half of the album, barring Manchala though. The composers, who had had created the wonderful Bin tere with Shafqat Amanat Ali before, try to inhabit similar space here, employing Ali’s Sufi vocals to soft rock, pop effect, but the song astoundingly disappoints. Zehnaseeb is the album’s only song that holds its own, proving yet again, how there is no substitute to gentle, charming melody.

The arrangement is appropriately upbeat, adding a nice, sunny vibe to the song. Chinmayi Sreepada, who sung the lilting Titli in Chennai Express, works well for the song co-sung by Shekhar himself. So does Ishq bulava. Sanam Puri’s unusual vocals, a fine balance of pop and folk, works well for the song.
A large part of the album is crippled by what most recent Bollywood albums, masquerading as new-age, cool pop suffer from — a simple, good melody, that can’t be compensated by even a great song arrangement. It’s also the same reason why the album works when it works.