Anu Malik made his debut as a music composer with the film ‘Hunterwali 77’ in the year 1980. When you keep that into account, you realise 2020 is actually his 40th year in the Hindi film music industry! There was a time when Hindi film composers would have careers spanning across twenty or even thirty years. R.D Burman, for instance, rose to prominence with the music of the Shammi Kapoor – Asha Parekh starrer ‘Teesri Manzil’ (1966) and his swan song turned out to be ‘1942 A Love Story’ (1994), which released a couple of months after his death. Composer Jatin Pandit made his debut as a music composer as a part of the Mandheer-Jatin setup (Mandheer/Vishwaraj Pandit being his elder brother) with the film ‘Dil Hi Dil Mein’ (1982) and continues to compose music as a solo composer even today. However, his peak period remains the time (1992-2006) during which he composed music with younger brother Lalit as a part of the much celebrated duo Jatin-Lalit.
Anu Malik first tasted success with ‘Poonam’ (1981) and his last releases were prominent films like J.P Dutta’s ‘Paltan’, the Shahid Kapoor – Shraddha Kapoor starrer ‘Batti Gul Meter Chalu’ and Yash Raj Films’ ‘Sui Dhaaga – Made In India’, all of which released in 2018. ‘Chaav Laga’ was a much popular number from ‘Sui Dhaaga – Made In India’ and ‘Gold Tamba’, his sole contribution to ‘Batti Gul Meter Chalu’ was a hit track. Thus, here is a rare example of a composer who has been around for forty years in the industry, working and delivering bonafide hits.
In the recent past, there have been a few instances of the composer not having a single release in a year but going by his current slate, it seems that he will be back to being the composer who works on multiple films a year and delivers hits by the dozen. A couple of days earlier, ‘Faraar’, the track he had composed, sung and co-written for Dibaker Banerji’s ‘Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar’ dropped. As the film (like several other films) has been delayed due to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, one has to wait for a while for the full album to drop.
Going ahead, Malik has a few more important films in the pipeline. Throughout his journey as a composer, Anu Malik has been time and again been lauded for being a versatile composer. That aspect will come to the fore prominently this year as the three confirmed releases so far are vastly different from each other in terms of their genres.
While Nadeem-Shravan had put together the soundtrack for Priyadarshan and Venus’ ‘Hungama’ (2003), Malik has been given the responsibility to create music for the second film in the franchise which is touted to be a laugh-a-minute comedy like the original. Anu Malik has enjoyed a very successful collaboration with both Priyadarshan (‘Virasat’, ‘Hera Pheri’) and Venus (‘Baazigar’, ‘Akele Hum Akele Tum’, ‘Baadshah’, ‘Main Hoon Na’). Another filmmaker he has had a very successful collaboration with is Sanjay Gupta. The two have worked together in various films like ‘Ram Shastra’, ‘Hameshaa’, ‘Khauff’ and ‘Shootout At Wadala’ and now, a couple of songs composed by Malik will be heard in Gupta’s new film ‘Mumbai Saga’ which stars John Abraham, Emraan Hashmi, Kaajal Agarwal, Jackie Shroff, Suniel Shetty and Gulshan Grover in principal roles.
With the composer working round-the-clock and being almost as busy as he was in his prime, it seems he is no mood to slowing down and plans to continue churning out music for films at regular intervals.