After their contribution to the multilingual action thriller, Saaho got reduced to one song – which is probably a good thing, given the disaster that the film ended up being – composing trio Shankar Ehsaan Loy (SEL) come back with their second full soundtrack of 2019 in The Zoya Factor , reuniting with director Abhishek Sharma after having worked in his 2010 debut film, Tere Bin Laden.
Standard fare
A few days we had a song from Khandaani Shafakhana that had the music label add “subscribe to T-Series” at the start of one of the songs. In The Zoya Factor , the makers take brand placement to the next level by naming a song ‘ Pepsi Ki Kasam ’. One could have optimistically argued that this is perhaps an ad of some sorts – the main man Dulquer Salmaan does after all play the captain of the Indian cricket team and in real life cricketers do endorse products – but SEL’s composition does not sound anything close to a jingle. In fact, the song does not sound anything remarkable at all, barely rising above a standard dance fare, delivered confidently by Benny Dayal. One of the things that had caught my attention in the movie’s trailer was a Celtic refrain – thankfully this does appear in the soundtrack as well, in the song ‘Lucky Charm’. Musically, the song did not turn out to be as exciting as I had hoped unfortunately. The Celtic hook punctuating a filmi qawwali-ish setting does not work well together. What make the song a winner though are Amitabh Bhattacharya’s lines – his quirky takes on our obsession with omens and lucky charms as a country, are very effective. Bhattacharya has been consistently brilliant with his output on the humorous side, for a while now. Of course there is Shankar Mahadevan delivering behind the mic with his trademark exuberance, alongside Raghuvir Yadav.
Lyrics score
After two energetic tracks, the composers go into a wistful mode for the other half. Yasser Desai leads ‘ Maheroo ’, a sedate melody that once again makes more of an impact lyrically than on the musical front. ‘ Kaash ’, the final song, is a pacier piece, and instantly reminiscent of multiple SEL songs of yore. Nevertheless, the tune has a likeable quality to it, and is sung splendidly by Arijit Singh and Alyssa Mendonsa. An unplugged version of the song sees Singh go solo. While, the number doesn’t sound quite “unplugged” to my ear, the mellower tone does suit the mood conveyed in the lines better. An interesting aside, about the lyrics for ‘ Kaash ’ – at one point the song goes “ main raat hoon.. aur chaand ki surat ki tarah hai tu ”. It’s quite a literal translation (courtesy Google), the latter half is exactly what the previous song’s title, ‘ Maheroo ’, means.
Sadly, the film’s soundtrack isn’t what one expects from SEL. The Zoya Factor is an average listening by the composers’ standards.
