Siddharth Mahadevan, Sukhwinder Singh, Divya Kumar, Javed Bashir, Shreya Ghoshal, Shankar Mahadevan, Loy Mendonsa Music directors Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy haven’t come up with a memorable album for a long time now. Their last hit soundtrack was Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara in 2011. And Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s biopic Bhaag Milkha Bhaag seems to be a good opportunity for the trio to get back into the game. The album starts with a short and soulful Gurbani sung by Daler Mehndi, which gets you into the perfect mood for the other songs. Attention quickly shifts to the high energy number Zinda. Sung by Shankar Mahadevan’s son Siddharth Mahadevan, this rock number is forceful and catchy. Siddharth has a fresh, promising voice, and we wouldn’t be surprised if he sang loads of playback numbers in the coming days – a worthy heir to his father’s crown, perhaps. Mere yaar is a guitar melody with Punjabi beats and lyrics that give it a very warm flavour. Javed Bashir’s voice is strong and appropriate for this rustic love song. Maston ka jhund is definitely better than a lot of bhangra numbers that are heard these days. It’s a situational and fun song sung by Divya Kumar, and despite the use of western instruments like guitar and drums, it retains its earthiness.

Sung by Shreya Ghoshal and Javed Bashir, O rangrez is a semi-classical love song. It’s the best composition on this album – the tabla, harmonium and violin harmony is especially beautiful. Slow motion angreza is essentially a country song – the English portions are sung by Loy Mendonsa and the Hindi parts are sung by Sukhwinder Singh. It’s a sweetly retro composition, very different from anything we’ve heard in the recent past. Kudos to the trio for coming up with a fusion track of this kind! Bhaag Milkha bhaag rock version is catchy, fast-paced and easy on the ear. Singer Siddharth Mahadevan shows that he has the range to pull off a high-voltage number like this one. The lyrics by Prasoon Joshi are inspirational – phook de khud ko jwala jwala, bin jale na hove ujala, lapat hai aag Milkha. The songs of Bhaag Milkha Bhaag are situational and go perfectly with the milieu of the film. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have definitely come up with a winning soundtrack for this biopic on champion athlete Milkha Singh.