Golmaal Returns is a huge hit, but the best song Tu saala was not in the film. How do you feel when such things happen? Obviously I feel very bad, because such a song’s life is finished and it goes waste. But I am lucky that the song still became popular. Rohit Shetty wanted to film this song in a big way but for various reasons, they scrapped the song.
A fter hot sound tracks like Dhoom and Dhoom 2, what went wrong in Sanjay Gadhvi’s Kidnap? I guess Sanjay and I wanted to relax and not be ambitious the way we had been! Sanjay gave my ex-partner Jeet and I our debut film Tere Liye and introduced us to Aditya Chopra who gave us our breakthrough film Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai. When Jeet broke away, Sanjay gave me Dhoom, and after the success of Dhoom there was obvious pressure to excel in Dhoom 2 as well. So we sort of took it easy this time! Does hit music make a film or the other way round? Good music definitely gives a boost to a film’s opening. Then if the film is a hit, the music works even better.
How would you define the elements of good music? I think that a good composition definitely works first, but good singers can lift it further, for the same composition will work better with better vocals and vice-versa. After that, a whole lot of elements take over. The orchestration also makes a difference, less because of its quality and more because of how it resonates with the listener. Finally the lyrics make a song live on. Lyrics are very important. I recall making 25 tunes in two days in a closed-door sitting and remembering only a couple of them. But when the words were written I recalled each one.
A s things stand today in your career, what kind of music can we look forward to from you in 2009-2010? I think that romantic songs will return in a big way, but in a new form, like with a rock-meets-lounge flavour.
But there is so much Punjabi infiltrating into your music that people have started calling you Pritam Singh! When I went to Delhi for a series of shows, the posters and invites both said “Pritam Singh Live In Concert”! (Laughs again). I suppose my long hair, beard and my name — Pritam is common in Punjab — combined to do the trick along with the Punjabi songs I have done in so many recent films from Jab We Met and Race to Kismat Konnection and Singh Is King.
You say that a good singer lifts a song, but your generation of composers also use off-key singers, non-singers and also those whose Hindi and Urdu dictions are pathetic. Why is that? I think that it’s all a part of working with new voices and new textures. Personally, though I may be wrong, I find flawed diction quite cute. Unusual phonetics can make a song sound more appealing.
Billo Barber is your next big release. And Priyadarshan is someone with whom you have done multiple films while it’s a first with Shah Rukh Khan. How was the experience? It was great. Shah Rukh’s a fantastic guy — 15 minutes into our first meeting it was as if I had known him for years. And Priyan sir is very clear about his brief and very quick about his choices.
Despite so many hits, all that people see is how many songs you ‘copy’. Does it hurt? It definitely hurts. I admit that I have taken many songs from various sources, but every composer who has done that has also done so much original work, which is played down. Why focus only on the negative? Jab We Met, one of my biggest-ever hits, was 100 per cent original. I have proved that I can make every kind of song — I am not only about club numbers, like it has been the case this year.