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Music Review: ‘Luka Chuppi’

Stepping off from behind the camera Laxman Utekar is making is directorial debut with ‘Luka Chuppi’ after 10 years as a top cinematographer in Bollywood. Starring Kartik Aaryan and Kriti Sanon, this is a coming of age love story from a small town couple who want defy traditions to try the ‘modern way’ of live in relationship approach. With a whole lot of family drama around featuring a great star cast of Pankaj Tripathi, Vinay Pathak, Atul Srivastava and Aparshakti Khurana there is a whole lot of fun and great talent that will come out of this movie. The trailer looks exciting and right up Aaryan’s style of slapstick fun movies with a rom-com angle. The music of the movie is a collaboration of a number of artists to bring in different fun aspects of entertainment to this soundtrack. Tanishk Bagchi is at the forefront of the album making this an exciting score to look forward to.

The album opens with the fun-filled remake of Poster Lagwa Do by White Noise. Taking Sameer & Dilip Sen’s original music score from Akshay Kumar starrer ‘Aflatoon’ (1997) this remake takes the original melody and tweaks it to what still doesn’t sound like a 2019 song. It maintains the 90s vibe quite strongly throughout even with its use of synthetic beat programming, rap and tons of artificial synth effects. This might work for some in the masses while for most looking for a bit of class to their remakes might despise this song. The lyrics are well executed in the re-write and so is the rap fairly well done which is perhaps the only saving grace for this song. Mika Singh & Sunanda Sharma vocals are quite average with nothing exciting or even remotely worthy of some praise to demonstrate any talent in there. This song is purely to appeal to the masses and does well in that scheme of musical goal but overall with fairly limited amounts of creativity or talent applied to it.

Coca Cola is the work of a strong collaboration between Tony Kakkar & Baghchi. A super cheesy item number, this song has a lot more oomph than the opening song of the album. Brother-sister pair Tony & Neha Kakkar sound worlds apart from each other but both do a fairly good job in delivering unique stylish vocals within limited range that the song demands. Bagchi’s programming and execution to create a unique melody does work well and has an annoyingly addictive personality to the song that will bring the success to the song. The beat is very catchy and works in the club & wedding setting equally well. Young Desi is a great rap talent discovery on the album with a very different style compared to the usual rap hitmakers in Bollywood. Lyrics by Mellow D with Tony Kakkar are plain basic and rather disturbing in parts but with a good flow that works smoothly within the setting of the song. This is an easy party hit even though it cheesy as hell!!

Karan Sehmbi leads the vocals of Photo with the lyrics of Nirmaan and musical vibes of Bagchi. Sehmbi is a great vocal talent making a Bollywood debut here surely with a bring future ahead. He has a strong rural Punjabi touch to his delivery style with ironically a modern delivery style. His range is great with some a quality vocal texture that is soothing to the ears. This song works perfectly well for his style.. or should we rather say that Bagchi has made it in such a way that it sounds great fit for the talent involved. The urban vibes are very clean with a deep beat and gentle flute solos on the bridge. The lyrics are quite well written with simple emotions captured well without much complication of words making it an easy one to sing along to. Overall a nice romantic number to groove to on a sunny romantic drive.

Tu Laung Main Elaachi feature the vocals of Tulsi Kumar with the music of Bagchi and lyrics by Kunaal Verma. In personality this song is a true metaphor of the films story itself where the lyrics & vocals are very traditional but the music & composition are very modern in style. Being a wedding song in its essence it has the typical tease and celebratory lyrics with strong north Indian UP vibes in the wordings. Kumar’s vocals are not something that seems fitting with the rest of the song and feel a little odd on the first few listens but they are not bad at all considering Kumar is a very talented singer. The musical arrangement is the real differentiator here. It has a strong experimental unique sound that is interesting to hear on a song of this genre but trust Bagchi to come up with something like this. Purely programming based with a deep electronic beat merged with tumbi & flutes it has a very different sound that takes some time getting used to. Full marks for trying something different here but not sure if it really works if we are being completely honest.

Abhijit Vaghani takes over the music for the final track with a romantic number called Duniyaa. Featuring the vocals of Akhil and Dhvani Bhaushali this is a cute but very warm love song. The composition & instrumentation is very simple which gives it its warm melodic vibes with high focus on lyrics & vocals. The arrangement feels inspired in a lot of places from different songs but as a while Vaghani manages to pull it off sounding strongly different. Akhil’s vocals are the highlight of the song with some good personality to it almost sounding like a Punjabi pop star. The female lead by Bhaushali is fairly average in the limited few lines she has in the song. The lyrics by Verma don’t’ have consistency and seem rather stop-start or choppy in places as far as the flow is concerned but the words are quite effective overall. This is a fairly decent romantic song that is good to listen to a few times but maybe not one that will stick in romantic playlists for too long.

FINAL WORD

The music of ‘Luka Chuppi’ is designed for the young semi urban audiences just as the story setting of the film does with a mix of old with new and traditions with modern ambitions. As such, the album has a tendency to drift between the two sides but manages to consistently find the balance. Sadly as a byproduct of its setting it doesn’t impress on either side staying rather mediocre on all aspects. Bagchi does try a few different things with the music making some impact with Coca Cola and Photo but goes a little too far on Tu Laung Main Elaachi. Poster Lagwa Do is a waste of space thanks to the average vocals and music production. Duniyaa is a good song no doubt but not a fantastic one although Akhil delivers what is perhaps the best vocal on the album. Coca Cola in the typical Tony Kakkar style sits at the top of cheesy music charts but somehow it manages to work as a party number. Photo is perhaps the best balanced number on the song well suited for this rom com with good vocals and great lyrics by Nirmaan. Overall this is not a wow album and very easy to forget about after a few listen. Unless the film is a raging success at the box office, there will be no favors to the music album to make it stick with the masses for long.

 

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