Dil Chahta Hai Soundtrack

A discussion of what is arguably the first rock soundtracks in Hindi cinema, that goes on to examine the relationship between Bollywood film songs and the Indie-pop movement of the 1980s-90s.

The 2001 buddy film Dil Chahta Hai (dir. Farhan Akhtar), had arguably the first rock soundtrack in Bollywood. The award-winning soundtrack is an entry point into the relationship between Bollywood film songs, Hindi language music, and the Indi-pop movement of the '80s and '90s.

Beaster-Jones draws from reviews by music critics and fans, industry interviews, and his own close analysis of the music and the film to trace the role of the Dil Chahta Hai soundtrack in transforming both the sound and production practices of Bollywood cinema in the new millennium. These songs emerged from the rock band and live performance aesthetic of writing trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. Their collaborative compositional approach for this soundtracks and later soundtracks reveals the changing tastes of India’s urban youth audiences and how that taste fueled the rise of the rockstar narrative in Hindi films.

The music for this soundtrack was the second Bollywood soundtrack composed by the superstar trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy (i.e. Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani, Loy Mendonsa), with lyrics penned by the inimitable Javed Akhtar. The songs from this soundtrack paved the way for the rock and EDM-oriented compositions of Hindi-language cinema that came to dominate the first decades of the 21st century, making Dil Chahta Hai among the most influential soundtracks in Indian cinematic history.