Lyrics: Kumaar, Shabbir Ahmed, Hardik Acharya, Shloke Shanky, Shivai Vyas and Salman Kha
Singers: Meet Bros, Deep Money, Neha Bhasin, Atif Aslam, Iulia Vantur, Amit Mishra, Jonita Gandhi, Sreerama Chandra, Mika Singh, Veera Saxena, Salman Khan, Shivai Vyas, Gurinder Seagal, Payal Dev and Vishal Mishra
Audio On: Tips Number of Songs: 10
Though Tips is not very active as a music company today, it was one of the leading music companies at one point of time. Even the films produced by the company were known to have good music. The first two films in the ‘Race’ franchise had hit songs by Pritam that propped up the two thrillers well. With Salman Khan leading the cast, the franchise has become bigger and one has good expectations from the music of ‘Race 3’. Though Pritam has not done the music for this one, his A&R company JAM8 has composed the new version of “Allah Duhai”. There are a bunch of other composers, some of them being rank newcomers.
Meet Bros open the album with “Heeriye”, a functional techno based track sung by Deep Money and Neha Bhasin. The track has a heard-before feel to it but is engaging enough to keep you hooked at least during the first listening. The arrangements are quite nice and the beats make you tap your feet. Deep Money’s voice faintly reminded me of Kamaal Khan when he sang ‘O O Jaane Jaana’ for Salman Khan. Neha Bhasin is efficient as always.
Vishal Mishra, who entered the music scene recently and has a couple of good tracks including “Jaane De” (‘Qareeb Qareeb Singlle’), is the man behind “Selfish”. He puts together a fairly nice, hummable tune but there are two things that bring the song down – Salman Khan’s lyrics and Lulia Vantur’s heavily accented singing. Despite being criticised heavily for his singing in the past, Atif does what he does best – lift the song with his velvety voice. This could have been a much better track with a better female vocalist and meaningful verses. The other two versions thankfully do not have Lulia’s voice in them.
Tushar Joshi from JAM8, who sung all the background songs in ‘Jagga Jasoos’, composes a new version of “Allah Duhai Hai”. The only thing that stands out in this song are the lyrics (Shabbir Ahmed and Shloke Lal). Tushar tries a lot of things in this song but he fails to match up to the two versions Pritam had put together for the earlier films. Perhaps, the fact that he puts in too many elements is what works against the song. Amit Mishra, Jonita Gandhi, Sreerama Chandra and Raja Kumari power the track well with their voices.
“Weekend ki partiyaan ho rahi hain, ek main aur ek tu, saath mein hain aur haath mein hai tattoo”, Hardik Acharya, one half of the composer duo Vicky-Hardik who have written “Party Chale On And On” gives competition to the level of creativity Salman Khan displayed as a lyricist with “Selfish”. There is nothing about this song worth writing home about. Inane lyrics, forgettable tune and templatized arrangements – this is not even the kind of song one would have been okay with finding its way into a smaller film.
After writing (or butchering) ‘Selfish’ Salman Khan picks up the pen and also the mic for “I Found Love”, a romantic ballad. To be fair, Vishal Mishra’s composition is far from being unlistenable but Khan’s overly processed voice and obnoxious lyrics makes it difficult for one to sit through multiple hearings.
If you listen to ‘Ek Galti’ just once, you will realise that it has been written by a novice. You also end up wondering how a song like this got approved in the first place. Shivaay Vyas leaves a very bad impression as a composer, singer and lyricist. Thank heavens that this song did not find its way into the film and only the ones who go through the entire album will have to suffer from this.
At the beginning of the song, Gurinder Seagal croons ‘R-A-C-E-3’ and you know where this song is heading towards. Imagine a bunch of newbies getting influenced by rap and other forms of contemporary music, getting very excited and doing an extremely poor job at creating a song on their own. “Saansain Hui Dhuan Dhuan” is exactly that kind of a song.
“Race 3 Mashup” aarrives at the end and DJ Kiran Kamath actually does a good job at putting together bits and parts of the mostly awful songs one heard in the album and putting it all together.
‘Race 3’ has perhaps the worst music for any film produced by Tips. One wonders if Ramesh Taurani had any say in the way the music shaped up. Some of the decent songs like ‘Selfish’ and ‘I Found Love’ have also been ruined as a result of the superstar overreaching and enforcing his decision on areas he has no expertise on.