Sunday, January 25, 2009

Slumdog Millionaire Music Review

After winning the Golden Globe for best music and getting four music related Oscar nominations Slumdog Millionaire "original" audio cds are finally avaiable in India. So does the music lives up to the hype it has been creating for the past two months now?


Ringa Ringa
Singers - Alka Yagnik, Ila Arun

For some strange reasons the Indian version of this album opens up with the typical bollywood item number "Ringa Ringa". You can definitely feel the hangover the song "Choli Ke Peeche" in this song and the fact that the same set of singers have been used for the same heightens the same. Personally I thought this was the weakest link of the album, but surprisingly this still made as the opening track. Ila Arun and Alka Yagnik are great as usual.


Jai Ho
Singers - Sukhvinder Singh , Tanvi Shah , Mahalaxmi Iyer, Vijay Prakash

One of the song which has won A.R. Rahman an Oscar nomination is definitely the picks of the album. Allegedly this song was created for the film "Yuvraaj" but unluckily (or luckily ;-) ) Subash Ghai decided not to use it in his film and hence it was used for SDM. Poetic lyrics by Gulzaar sahab are great with Sukhvinder Singh again not disappointing. Definitely one of the tracks to look forward to in this album.

O Saya
Singers - A.R. Rahman, MIA

This song produced in collaboration with MIA has got SDM one more Oscar nomination. Song played alongwith the titles in the movie is amazingly picturized in the slums of Mumbai and A.R. Rahman and MIA lend some great vocals to this song. My favourite in the album, but I guess this may lose out to "Jai Ho" as the frontrunner for an Oscar winner.

All of the rest are typically instrumental songs, gelling really well in the movie though my favourite being "Latikas Theme" and "Liquid Dance". The album is finally concluded by the soulful number "Dreams On Fire".


To conclude I would not recommend this as Rahman's best work, but this definitely another gem in Rahman's cap. Go and enjoy this wonder. :-)