The title says it all. Rohit Shetty’s Golmaal Returns with Tushaar Kapoor, Ajay Devgan and Arshad Warsi who are psyched up for the second ride while Sharman Joshi has been replaced by Shreyas Talpade. Accompanying the gents are Kareena Kapoor, Celina Jaitley, Amrita Arora and Anjana Sukhani. After giving the chartbuster title song for the first film, it is a surprise not to see Vishal-Shekhar back in the music director’s seat. It has instead been filled by Pritam while the lyrics are penned by Sameer. The songs have been extensively sung by Neeraj Shridhar (‘Hare Ram Hare Ram’ – Bhool Bhulaiya) and Suzy Q (‘Hey Ya’ – Kindnap and ‘Mahiya’ – Awarapan).
The album starts with a non-Pritam composition, Tha Kar Ke performed by Neeraj, Anvesha, Aakariti, Earl and Indie. An obvious party track, with a mixture of Jamaican and techno beats, this Ashish Pandit composition reflects what the movie proposes: fun and frolic. Unfortunately, music arrangements drown the singers’ vocals while the street smart chorus mixed with the tacky English lines exacerbate the noise like quality of the song. Lyrics, on a general scale, are relatively run-of-the-mill with ‘Tha Kar Ke’ proving to be a very unimpressive title phrase. The remix by DJs Nikhil and Naved considerably improve the song with club-like music arrangements.
Vacancy by Neeraj, Suhail and Suzy Q does not improve the album’s chances. Too many senseless sounds with Suzy’s wanna-be hip-hop vocals makes ‘Vacancy’ a terrible fare. Once again, Sameer comes up with unimpressive Hindi lyrics while Neeraj and Ashish Pandit are unhelpful with the English ones. The only bearable bit is a short excerpt from Anoushka Manchanda’s ‘Golmaal’ from the original film. ‘Vacancy’ also appears as the remix later on which neither improves nor hinders the track.
Anoushka Manchanda performs the next track, Tu Saala. Seeing her name on the back cover of the CD revs up some hope in the listener, but do not smile just yet. The song is about a possessive and suspicious girlfriend who loves her boyfriend a lot but warns that if he cheats on her, his life will not be spared. Anoushka’s enthusiastic vocals make the Sameer’s dire lyrics bearable while the subtle Punjabi dhol beats win Pritam some points. The little English excerpt later in the song is not too bad either. However, the frequent annoying use of a sound akin to an electronic-bagpiper reduces the song’s appeal. In this instance, the remix of ‘Tu Saala’ is quite good despite the use of bagpipers in the background.
Meow is easily the worst track of the album. Suzy’s pretentious and over-zealous vocals may prove to be hazardous to listeners’ ears, hence, caution is advised. The drastic-duo of Sameer and Pritam continue the terrible combination of lyrics and music. While ‘Meow’ has a Hindi and an English version, both sound the same due to the extensive use of English lyrics in the Hindi track. Indie, Suzy, Neeraj and Ashish fail again in providing viable English lyrics. The remix of ‘Meow’ is equally horrific.
The album closes with tracks from the prequel. Anushka’s ‘Golmaal’, KK and Shaan’s ‘Golmaal’ and their unimpressive remixes. These are accompanied by the retro track ‘Aage Peeche’ and a mediocre remixed version of ‘Rehja Re’.
All in all, Rohit Shetty should have walked to the ends of the earth or merely to the office of Vishal and Shekhar (or simply any other music director) if he wanted his movie’s music to fare well. However, he got the unimpressive copy-cat Pritam and the uncreative Sameer who drastically hindered the chances of giving the audiences a good album. If one is missing Anushka’s rocking version of ‘Golmaal’ from the prequel, than the Golmaal Returns album might be worth getting a hold of. Otherwise, save your ears and give this one a miss.
