3 min readSep 6, 2013 12:18 AM IST
Composer: Pritam
Lyricist: Irshad Kamil,Amitabh Bhattacharya
Rating: **
Sounds familiar
Phata Poster Nikhla Hero starts with Agal bagal that has the colour and fun quotient of a Goan carnival song. It is the kind of song that the singer makes or breaks and here,Mika,does a superb job singing it with his trademark casualness.
Main rang sharbaton ka is the Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani’s Tera hone laga hoon-equivalent of the album that aims for superficial pleasures,underlined by the auto-tuned voices of Atif Aslam and Chinmayee Sripada. To give credit where it’s due,the hook line is melodic,but the rest sounds too formulaic to leave a lasting impression. In Hey mr dj,Pritam attempts to play it cool with a harmonium solo in an electro-pop set-up but there is little imagination elsewhere. Yet,it has got enough punches — there is a catchphrase thrown in “Lets go Bananas” — that will reach where it’s aimed for — the dance floors,but the song doesn’t go anywhere beyond that.
Mere bina tu (duet version) is the one where things seem to get better. Rahat Fateh Ali Khan underplays while Harshdeep Kaur ably supports,but the song’s best portions come in its arrangement. There is a lovely guitar solo in the middle that makes you wish there were more of such flourishes in the rest of the album.
Dhating naach is pretty much from the mould of dance numbers with a bit of madness thrown in — here underlined by its chorus — which Pritam has demonstrated in the past with songs like Badtameez dil or Dil mein baji guitar. Janam janam,a song on the mother-son relationship,comes off as sappy,and alarmingly mediocre.
Pritam seems to have made it a habit getting Arijit Singh sing in reprise version tracks,as we’ve earlier heard in Barfi!’s Phir le aya dil and more recently,Yeh Jawaani’s… Ilahi and kabira. Here,Arijit definitely betters it making it a much more pleasant listen than Aslam’s laboured vocals.
Not half as good as the director-composer’s previous outing,Phata Poster Nikla Hero comes off as a below-average album with one song (Agal bagal) to remember at best.
