Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy’s debut album was Dus (1997). Though the film remained incomplete due to the unfortunate demise of director Mukul Anand, the soundtrack was released and one of the songs from it – ‘Hindustan’ – continues to remain a much-loved, patriotic anthem. Before they entered the big league with ‘Mission Kashmir’ (2000) followed by ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ (2001), they composed some interesting music for smaller films like ‘Shool’ (1999) and ‘Rockford’ (1999). During this phase, they also put together a couple of songs for Sunny Deol’s directorial debut ‘Dillagi’ (1999). Jatin-Lalit were the main composers in the film but the album had a couple of songs by other composers like Anand-Milind, Sukhwinder Singh and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy themselves.
Though they only had a couple of songs to their credit in the album, this was a special film as it marked their first collaboration with Javed Akhtar. Akhtar had written all the songs in this multi-composer album. This was the first of the many times the composer trio and the lyricist were to work together. Over the years, they collaborated on a large number of successful films including the likes of ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ (2001), ‘Kal Ho Naa Ho’ (2003), ‘Laqshya’ (2004), ‘Wake Up Sid’ (2009) and ‘Dil Dhadakne Do’ (2015). Now, ‘Panga’, director Ashwiny Iyer Tiwary’s new film, has been added to this list.
The sports drama, which features Kangana Ranaut, Jassie Gill and Richa Chaddha in principal roles, arrives at a time when the composer/s – lyricist team completes two decades of working together. This also fills up a gap as the last film Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Javed Akhtar had collaborated on (‘Rock On!! 2’) had arrived almost four years back. The title track of the film was released recently and the other songs from the album should be out before the film hits the theatres on 24 January, 2020.