Taare Zameen Par - Music Review

Taare Zameer Par is Aamir Khan's first movie as a director. He's also producing it, and of course, he's the main lead. See picture.

GIven that it's Aamir Khan, it'll probably be something you want to check out. I know I do. (It comes out December 21st, 2007.)

And the music. Hmm...

For this movie, Aamir Khan doesn't use A.R. Rahman as he has in the past for Lagaan, etc. Instead, he turns to Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy.

But first, I have to digress for a sec. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy just pulled off a brilliant soundtrack with Johnny Gaddaar .. A soundtrack as shockingly brilliant as the movie was. (I highly recommend the movie, by the way..)

Shocking because the last soundtrack from them that I can remember off the top of my head is Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (...remember 'Where's the party tonight?' ) It's almost as if SEL were set free from their Karan Johar-ized chains for Johnny Gaddaar .. The result is brilliant - I'm sorry, but there's no other word for it. Check out 'Johnny Gaddaar', the title track, as well as 'Move Your Body' featuring HardKaur (both tracks have alternate Tamil and Telegu versions as well for some random reason.) My favorite, however, is the breakbeat version of the title track, 'Johnny Breakbeat Mera Naam' :

See what I mean ? Also, wikipedia informs me that Jaideep Sahani (ref: my Aaja Nachle review) did the lyrics for Johnny Gaddaar as well. I'm officially a fan.

On to Taare Zameen Par. I have mixed feelings about this soundtrack. I only really liked a couple of songs - the others seemed a bit, well, noisy.

The one song I really did like was the title track. 'Taare Zameen Par' starts off slow and then develops a rhythmn and takes on a new life when the chorus comes in. It's a beautiful, beautiful song, one that stays with you for a long time. The lyrics are poetic, comparing the miracle of children to little beautiful things like a familiar shoulder in a crowd, a short nap in the middle of the day, the sound of laughter breaking the silence.

Hindi is my native language, although I speak English more often than Hindi nowadays, so much so that I even dream in English sometimes, and think in it. But Hindi is my language, my own, part of my identity, and I've suddenly realized while listening to this song that perhaps that is why songs or poems or anything I read or listen to in Hindi always sounds so much more in Hindi than it does in English - everything just has more meaning.

The other really good song on the soundtrack is Kholo Kholo, sung by Raman Mahadevan. You have to listen to it a couple of times, then you'll know what I'm talking about. As it turns out, Raman's NOT related to Shankar Mahadevan at all. Here's Raman's Myspace page - he has his own pop album out, as well as soundtracks such as Heyy Babby (sp?) and Johnny Gaddaar (he's credited on the Tamil vocals).

Fyi, Aamir Khan has a blog, where he actually writes about stuff, and his life, and his movies, and no, it's not a promotional one-off thing for any of his movies. It's actually his blog. He recently wrote a post about how petrified he was because the music for TZP just came out, and he was so scared people wouldn't like it. He gets thousands of comments on every one of his posts, of course, but he reads every single comment, even the ones from random people pushing their scripts.

The film's website has the lyrics to all the tracks, along with an English translation. 

Comments

[aarushirox]

I caught a few mistakes in your review!

1. "Where's the Party Tonight?" is not from Kabhi Khushi Khabi Gham. It's from Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. And Kabhi Kushi Khabi Gham's music is done by Jatin Lalit, not SEL.

2. You said that Johnny Gaddar had a Tamil and Telegu track. But "Telegu" is actually spelled "TelUgu"