1949

Best songs of 1949: Final Wrap Up 5

December 24, 2016

The SoY Award for the Best Music Director goes to? For the final wrap up, I can do no better than quote Mahesh: “The year 1949 itself was the biggest winner of all.” That refers to the historical place of the year in the evolution of Hindi film songs which we have discussed in the […]

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Best songs of 1949: Wrap Up 4

Ae mohabbat unse milne ka bahana ban gaya November 20, 2016

And the SoY Award for the Best Duet goes to? It is always a pleasure to write the Wrap Up 4, which is for the best duets of the year. The best solos always generate some  controversy. In male solos this year, there was a close tie between Rafi and Mukesh. My conclusion that Mukesh […]

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Best songs of 1949: Wrap Up 3

Lata Mangeshkar September 28, 2016

Wishing Lata Mangeshkar a very Happy Birthday on her 87th birth anniversary (b. 28 September 1929) with her best songs of 1949 It is a no-brainer that Lata Mangeshkar was the best female playback singer of 1949. In later years, that would become routine – she defined the lead female voice. But in 1949, it […]

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Best songs of 1949: Wrap Up 2

Amirbai Karnataki-Rajkumari-Zeenat Begum-Suraiya-Surinder Kaur July 13, 2016

And the SoY Award for the Best ‘Other’ Female Playback Singer goes to? As the readers would recall from the overview post on the best songs of 1949, this was a great year for the ‘other’ singers, and female singers in general. There were about 80 female solos in my select list of 160 (the […]

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Best songs of 1949: Wrap Up 1

Rafi and Mukesh June 25, 2016

Songs of Yore Award for the Best Male Playback Singer goes to? As we have seen in the overview post on the Best songs of 1949, and as I have observed elsewhere a number of times, 1949 was the year of Tsunami wave of Lata Mangeshkar. The yesteryear vintage singers, like Suraiya, Shamshad Begum, Rajkumari […]

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Best songs of 1949: And the winners are?

Best songs of 1949 April 3, 2016

In our journey in the Time Machine to yearwise review of the best songs of a year, we now enter what is the single most important year in the history of film music. The evolution of Hindi film music can be seen as gradual changes, shaken with major tectonic shifts once in a while. One […]

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