Music Review: ‘Boss’

With below average movies like ‘Blue’ (2009) on his list of directions, Anthony D’souza has a lot to prove his mettle with the forthcoming ‘Boss’starring Akshay Kumar in the lead role. With average looking trailers and no major names except him to boast of, ‘Boss’ doesn’t set expectations too high. However, what a film lacks could easily made up with in its music… “Oomph”. With Honey Singh on the bill along with Meet Bros Anjjan amongst others, it seems the songs of ‘Boss’ have been cherry-picked to fit the bill to create a good album. Anjjan has the recent success of ‘Zanjeer’ (2013) to boast of while Honey Singh has a string of hits to talk about including Lungi Dance in the hugely successful ‘Chennai Express’ (2013).

The title track Boss in the voice of and directed by Anjjan Meet Bros with Honey Singh by his side has a gangster feel to an RnB beat with a Haryanvi accent delivered by Singh in the rap. Lyrics by Kumaar also fit well to the personality of the song and the film’s theme. The composition and lyrics along with vocals and instrumentation create a decent personality for the album while setting expectations and tone of the album but it fails to stand out and create a unique identity.

Hum Na Tode directed by PA Deepak is his debut as a music director after years of studio engineering experience including winning the Grammy for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ (2008). He does a great job in a niche style of a song that could have only been sung by the one and only Vishal Dadlani. The song is a Haryanvi street celebration packed with masti with a special appearance by Prabhu Deva in the video! Lyrics by Kumaar work poetically well for the exact language and words relevant to this northern state of India with a brilliant mix of different styles of percussion that only a great engineer like Deepak could have recorded. Good listen for a happy day.

Sonu Nigam must be running out of options of songs to sing to be singing songs like Pitah Se Hai Naam. The composition and arrangement with instrumentation by Anjjan Meet Bros is copycat of a million other songs like this with boring lyrics by Kumaar. A song dedicated to fathers could have been done much better but instead this one is boring and terribly conceptualised by Anjjan and director D�۪souza.

The biggie and the superstar song of the album is Party All Night��and is easily the biggest thing that will hit the clubs and house parties this festive season. Only Yo Yo Honey Singh could have delivered a funky and fun song like this. The music has a psycadelic synth hook and killer beats which make this nothing short of an anthem. The vocal delivery, once again in a Haryanvi accent, is perfect with massive lyrics by Sahil Kaushal. This is a play-out-loud track with some offensive language. Beware, once this track will play one will literally have to call the police to shut it down.. ���phir bhi party yunhi chalegi�۝! Sonakshi Sinha does a guest appearance in this dance floor burner.

The original from the movie ‘Jaanbaaz’ (1986) is perhaps one of my personal favourites. As much as I would like to ignore the idea of a mix of the Feroz Khan and Sridevi classic, the “reinvention” of Har Kisi Ko is quite refreshing and comes packed with new lyrics beautifully penned by Manoj Yadav and in the mesmerising voice of Nikhil D’souza who delivers it effortlessly. But kudos to Chirantan Bhatt for giving an exciting rock flavour to an all-time classic without destroying the original and selecting a great singer and lyricist to keep the original safe.

Boss Entry Theme by Meet Bros Anjjan is musically interesting but inspired from so many recent Bollywood films that have the strong Ganpati celebrations Maharashtra Lavni drums mix to create intense but fun entry theme music for the hero. This music piece has a bit of South Indian and RnB music styles thrown in too.

Boss (Remix) of the Meet Bros Anjjan original is not far from the original except for a few extra beats thrown in to give it a beach party Sean Paul style of composition.

Har Kisi Ko (Version 2) features singers Arijit Singh and Neeti Mohan this time who do equal justice to the deeply romantic lyrics by Manoj Yadav. This version tends more towards rock than the soulful lounge flavour that the Nikhil D�۪souza version delivered. The genius addition of Neeti Mohan to the song gives it some more romantic depth with the duet personality.

FINAL WORD

The music of ��Boss�۪ is better than expected with songs like Party All Night, Har Kisi Ko, Boss and Hum Na Tode. The OST lacks innovation but that does not make a lot of difference when you have decently well done songs that simply sound good and deliver a good melody to the ears. Party All Night is the song to watch out for as Honey Singh is on fire once again creating a monster! Revival of Har Kisi Ko is a brilliant piece of work and Nikhil D�۪souza shines through its brilliance. Overall ��Boss�۪ OST is a good listen and does raise the films profile a bit and will surely help drive audiences to the cinema when it hits the screens with Akshay Kumar going from ��Khiladi�۪ to ��Boss�۪!