Music Review: ‘Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu’

Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu is the kind of soundtrack that fans of music director Amit Trivedi and lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya were hoping they would never make. Trivedi, best known for his work on such clutter breakers as Dev.D and Udaan, went from indie darling to mainstream favourite with 2010’s Aisha. There he proved that you could make smart music even for a dumb film. On Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, however, Trivedi delivers his most commercial OST until date—an album full of the kind of poppy electro dance tunes and mopey guitar-based ballads that characterise Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Vishal-Shekhar’s soundtracks for Karan Johar-produced romcoms. Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, starring Imran Khan and Kareena Kapoor, will be the next Johar bankrolled release after Agneepath and if the idea was to infuse a bout of freshness by hiring a new music director, it seems to have worked the other way around with Trivedi delivering an ear-wormy collection of songs that challenge neither him nor his listeners.

If at all he deviates from the tried-and-tested, post-Dostana (2008) Dharma romcom musical template, it’s through the use of a horn section—ably manned by the trio of Joseph Monsorate, Kishore Sodha and Steve Patrick—that appears on three of the five tracks. They’re used to add gaiety to the nursery rock of “Gubbare”, to sprinkle some pathos on motivational ballad “Kar Chalna Shuru Tu”, and are employed, most effectively, on the situational “Aunty Ji”. The least immediate but the most imaginative of all the tunes, the latter shifts between line-dance banjo, jive-friendly rock n’ roll and a snatch of Konkani pop-folk, in a manner that’s almost Rahman-esque. However, Bhattacharya’s lyrics are occasionally so trite—“Ek main hoon aur ek tu/I wanna be with you” goes the chorus of “Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu”—that even when Trivedi attempts to go all Daft Punk on the title track, the robot pop ends up sounding more like a Bollywood version of The Black Eyed Peas.

Ek Main Aur Ekk Tu, Soundtrack, T-Series, Rs175.