Music Review: ‘Baaghi 3’

Continuing in his two year cycle Ahmed Khan is coming back with ‘Baaghi 3’. The action thrillers starring Tiger Shroff keep getting bigger, wilder and more extreme in action as this instalment sees Shroff going to war with a whole country! The indestructible Shroff makes quite an impression in the film trailer as he heads to Syria to save his brother and is joined by Riteish Deshmukh and Shraddha Kapoor in the third instalment. While one can expect great action and visual effects in this movie, the music expectations are rather mediocre from this film. The past two movies cannot boast of a proper soundtrack and typically have had one or two big item dance numbers to break the action monotony in the movie. With Shroff’s dancing skills the range and variety of music is limited to dance numbers that hold the music flag up for the ‘Baaghi’ series.

The first single release is as expected a dance remake of the hit from the movie ‘Dus’ (2005). Dus Bahane 2.0 has been refreshed by the original composers Vishal – Shekhar and that is perhaps why one can’t seem to find something unique and different in this remake. Except for adding some additional music bits and sound effects the overall sound of this remake is exactly the same. There is a break dance drop added in for Shroff to deliver a solo showcase and that’s pretty much it on the music front. The lyrics are the same as the original as well and so are the vocals as KK and Shaan sound as the original. They could have just used the original 2005 vocal tracks without any need to rerecord with the singers. The only difference is the new bit of lyrics by Prachi Jalonvi in the last minute of the song with a new stanza and female vocals delivered by Tulsi Kumar. She does a fair job but it is nothing to boast of as she has much better vocals to her credit. The lyrics are fairly average and cleverly placed at the end as the original stanzas are just too strong and well known. Even the video is disappointing as Kapoor is given the role of looking sexy while Shroff takes the dance focus. There is not much dance choreography with a bigger focus on location and production. Overall this is quite disappointing as it is not really a remake but a glorified remix or a photocopy of the original. 2.5/5

Another song revival, this time by the remake king Tanishk Bagchi who takes on 1984 Jitendra and Sri Devi hit Ek Ankh Maru To with a Marathi touch to it. This remake is called Bhankas with additional lyrics by Shabbir Ahmed who adds at least more value to the song than the earlier single. Taking Indeevar’s original chorus he adds music fun tease bits to the stanza’s that is easy to relate to. He doesn’t overpower the chorus which is the real essence of this remake song and that is nice touch. Bagchi in his typical style adds in a good amount of music variation keeping the original music of Bappi Lahiri intact and adding layers of modern beats and trumpets on top of that. This gives the song its contemporary appeal with a more retro feel to it rather than a complete 2020 music styling. The music bridge is nicely programmed for Shroff to deliver his break dance moves in the video. It’s great to hear Lahiri himself on the chorus along with Dev Negi and Jonita Gandhi leading the vocals. Gandhi does a good job delivering her identity to the vocal while Negi brings in the dejavu almost sounding like Kishore Kumar in parts. But the both bring in the vigour and fun that one remembers the original 1984 song for. What doesn’t work is this being a wedding song as in the video. It’s almost the end of the wedding season in India and the video seems to be trying too hard to make this work as a wedding party song. 3/5

Talk about a modern day 2020 item number and the next song Do You Love Me fits the bill. Written and composed by Bagchi, it is yet another ‘inspired copy’ from the remake maestro. Taking the original title and electric guitar melody from Lebanese artist René Bendali, Bagchi adds some of his own Bollywood touch to the song. It has a sick deep bass beat that pretty much rules the melody throughout. The bass is so deep that it can pretty much blow up woofers at high volumes and he layers it up with some interesting programmed psychedelic synths and Tabla samples. The lyrics are too damn ordinary though which kinda makes it an easy one to sing-along to, but they are quite dull. Nikhita Gandhi does a fair job though bringing tons of sexiness to her vocal that works for the style of the song. There is not much vocal scope or lyrics to show her talent and Bagchi uses her well to mix her into the electronic feel of the song putting good amount of effects on her voice. The song is bit too radical and doesn’t fit in the club genre. It’s difficult to place this song and frankly doesn’t work in the audio domain but watch the video with Disha Patani in her sexy avatar and one might be forced to like the song! 2.5/5

Get Ready to Fight-Reloaded is the work of Pranaay Rijia on the music and vocals with supporting vocals by metal singer Siddharth Basrur and lyrics by Ginny Diwan. There is not much on the lyrics initially as the hook goes on a repeat but then the stanza has a good amount of story setting to it. The music has a good amount of variety and bob to it making it apt for the background action score for the film. There is rock, electro, Hip-Hop and India pop styles mashed up together giving the song its personality. The whistling gives the song its real vibe. Vocals are the best part as the vigour really comes through and Rijia substitutes Benny Dayal quite well from the original song in the older movies in the series. A decent number but not one that finds its way into general pleasure listening. 2.5/5

Sachet-Parampara deliver the romantic touch to the album with the intense number Faslon Mein. The song is typical Sachet Tandon style of music delivered at a high end range but to perfection. His vocal ability and clarity that he delivers the intensity with is amazing to hear. This song would be a killer to hear him sing live on stage in a concert with its soft rock melody. The simplistic ambient music adds depth to the song with violins used really well to fill the ambience. A simple Tabla beat is the real backbone of the song but the real essence of the song is in the lyrics by Ahmed. His choice of words and the flow is beautifully arranged. The message of belonging together come what may is very nicely conveyed. But the song is not great to sing along to and that is perhaps a compositional let down limiting its commercial success options. A good song nonetheless. 3.5/5

It’s great to hear Shaan twice on this album singing this time to Rochak Kohli’s music on Tujhe Rab Mana. He sings in his trademark style with that silky smooth voice and brings some amount of emotion to the lyrics talking about the love between brothers who stand up for each other in all circumstances. But the music and composition is pretty dud unlike any Kohli song. The arrangement is rather boring and there is not much charisma in it. The lyrics by Gautam G Sharma & Gurpreet Saini are very flat and single tone. There is no range to this song either in the emotions it represents nor the music making this a boring listening experience even though the thought behind it is quite heart-warming. This song is easy to skip past unless one is looking for a song about brotherly-love. 2/5

FINAL WORD

The soundtrack of ‘Baaghi 3’ is quite mediocre and seems to try a little too hard to impress. It tries to get all the commercial hit making formulas but still fails to actually create anything that works. Firstly the album doesn’t gel together and seems loosely linked in its flow from one song to the other. There is variety in genres but there is no consistency in sound and styling being a mix-match album. Vishal-Shekhar are totally against remakes but they try it out with Dus Bahane 2.0 and land up creating a remix rather than a remake. Even as a remix it is an okay one as it almost sounds like the original itself. As a remake Bhankas by Bagchi is better comparatively but it still is not a wow moment in the album. Do You Love Me as an item number is a bit too radical and sounds phoney in many ways. Faaslon Mein is the only good number that really has some good amount of content to it thanks to Shabbir Ahmed. But we have to give it to it that vocally there is good talent demonstrated here with Dev Negi, Sachet Tandon, Nikhita Gandhi and of course Shaan and KK delivering their best on respective songs. As a full soundtrack this is really not one that listeners would find worth remembering for long.

BizAsiaLive.com Rating – 2.5/5

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.