Tips, Rs 160
Pritam finally vindicates his status as the prime choice among composers - this is his fourth score for Tips and anyway ranks as his best music album after - coincidentally - Tips’ Race. Clearly, the songs are situational and Irshad Kamil writes well, even if not on the level of Chameli and Jab We Met. But we do hope that the music is used well in the film visually, unlike Pritam’s Love Aaj Kal, where the songs were wasted.
The three outright winners in this album are, in that order, Oh by god (Mika-Sunidhi), a super fizzy number, Neeraj Shridhar-Suzanne D’Mello’s Prem ki naiyya and KK-Sunidhi-Hard Kaur’s Main tera dhadkan teri. The interesting part is that even Atif Aslam’s perennially-faulty diction (a sore point with most of today’s music men who are unfamiliar with Hindi and Urdu) does not grate as the song Tu jaane na is melodious and in his real range, though the unplugged version sung by Kailash, Paresh and Naresh is far superior. Atif-Alisha’s Tera hone lagaa hoon is easy on the ears and only the average Aa jao meri tamanna (Javed-Jojo) sounds as if it has wandered in from some lesser Pritam soundtrack.

Bal Ganesh 2
Shemaroo, Rs 160
The music album is a compilation of all the tracks from Bal Ganesh, released in 2007. One track, De taali (for some weird reason this one’s called “Power of Sukhwinder” in parenthesis!!) is re-recorded with child contestants from a 2009 TV talent hunt replacing the vocals of their 2007 counterparts. The songs are okay and have contemporary grooves. However, there is nothing outstanding about the album.