Music Review: Parineeti Chopra, Aditya Roy Kapur’s ‘Daawat-e-Ishq’

The Daawat-e-Ishq title song, like the composers’ loving throwback to Bollywood’s popular qawwali numbers, is charged with a festive spirit. It’s got an easy, hummable hook and singers Javed Ali and Sunidhi Chauhan pour in the right amount of drama.

The sparkling sound of the rebab, the lovely little touches of santoor richly dress up the song. Next up is the old-fashioned Mannat that brings back the melodious vocal flourishes of Sonu Nigam. While it’s great to hear Nigam after a long time, the song doesn’t stand out much apart from Munir’s richly textured lyrics, and some nice variations in the arrangement. Rangreli suffers from the same problem of the lack of a good central melody. The song lights up only around the antara thanks to Wajid and Shreya Ghosal’s spirited singing.

Shayarana is the album’s breezy romantic number and is also very unlike Sajid-Wajid. One can see the effort to recreate a Pareshaan (Parineeti, Shalmali Kholgade, Munir and Faisal). While the light, rock ballad doesn’t make for a great composition, it does offer some relief to the ears amidst all the tabla-dholak. I didn’t know what to make of Jaadu tone waaliya at first but it grows over a few listens. The percussions are infectious and there is an odd Punjabi authenticity to it, but its singer Shabir Sabri with his solid rendition owns the song.

Mannat reprise takes the boring, unimaginative route of swapping the male and female singing portions of the original. The result is ineffective. But the songs, barring the title track and Jaadu tone waaliya, don’t have a lasting impression.