Three of the principal characters in ‘Fanney Khan’– a man who could not fulfil his dream of becoming a singer, a young girl who aspired to carve a career in music and an established singer – are associated with music. The film is jointly produced by Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, a man who is known to have a good ear for music and Bhushan Kumar, the head honcho of a music company. Keeping all these factors in mind, one cannot help but expect the film to have a good soundtrack.
Though there is a ‘recreated’ track in the album, it is not remix-master Tanishk Bagchi but Amit Trivedi who does the honours here. Tanishk actually comes up with an original composition in the form of “Mohabbat”, the video of which features Aishwarya Rai Bachchan who plays a singer in the film. Though the song does not break any new ground, it the tune is fairly engaging and Irshad Kamil’s words do give it a certain edge.
The recreated track one was talking about is Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s “Halka Halka” which has been crooned and rearranged by a bunch of singers and composers respectively in the past several years. If somebody plays this song without being aware of its origins, he would be very surprised when the hook-line (“yeh jo halka halka…”) arrives as Amit has changed the structure of the composition vastly. Without drawing any parallels with the original, it works fairly well as a standalone track.
“Achche Din” has the kind of sound and feel one has come across in several songs composed by Amit in the past. Interestingly, he uses his own for these kind of tracks (e.g “Zinda” – ‘Lootera’, “Tafreeh” – ‘Bhavesh Joshi Superhero’). Maybe using another singer for this one would have helped in controlling the familiarity factor. Nevertheless, it makes for an engaging hear. Irshad Kamil writes some thoughtful lyrics that add a lot of spark to the track.
Monali Thakur is the voice of Lata Sharma (Pihu Sand), a teenaged girl who aspires to be a singer. She sings the two songs that feature the young actress. Of the two songs, it is “Fu Bai Fu” that makes a better impression. The irreverence in the song, accentuated by some good wordplay by Irshad Kamil wherein he incorporates the names of several films and film songs, makes for a good hear. Despite Monali’s spirited rendition “Tere Jaisa Tu Hai” sounds like a leftover piece from ‘Secret Superstar’, the soundtrack of which I am personally not a fan of. The track is far from being bad but not the kind you would like to play on a loop either.
The music of ‘Fanney Khan’ does not turn out to be as good as one had expected it to be. With music playing an important role in the film and heavyweights like Bhushan Kumar and Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra putting their weight behind it, one had expected better.