A tribute to old Hindi film music. Songs of the 30s through the 60s.

Best songs of year

Best songs of 1945: Wrap Up 2

October 7, 2020

And the Award for the Best Female Playback Singer goes to? When Noorjehan visited India in 1982 to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of Indian talkie movies, one of the songs she chose to sing was Baithi hun teri yaad ka lekar ke sahara from Village Girl (1945), composed by Shyam Sundar, to a deafening applause. […]

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Best songs of 1945: Wrap Up 1

July 23, 2020

And the Award for the Best Male Playback Singer goes to? My Overview post of the best songs of the year 1945 had a Master List of 59/60 Memorable Songs (one song had a female solo and a female-female duet version), the least in the year-wise reviews so far. This was expected not only because […]

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Best songs of 1945: And the winners are?

Best films of 1945_Tadbir-Kurukshetra-Village Girl-Zeenat-Badi Ma-Pahli Nazar

May 20, 2020

Now we come to the end of the year-wise review going backwards. It was progressively going into more unknown territory. Out of approximately 670 songs from 74 films in 1945, nothing is known about the singers of about 300 songs, i.e 45% of the total. However, a striking feature of this year is the significantly […]

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Best songs of 1946: Final Wrap Up 4

December 25, 2019

And the SoY Award for the Best Music Director goes to? Wishing Merry Christmas to the readers and a tribute to Naushad on his Birth Centenary (25 December 1919 – 5 May 2006) I need not have put a question mark about the best music director of 1946. Rarely one comes across such a single-horse […]

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Best songs of 1946: Wrap Up 3

December 6, 2019

And the SoY award for the best duet goes to? In the year-wise reviews of the best songs, as we entered pre-1949, we gradually encountered less and less familiar songs. It became quite pronounced in 1946, in which I could include only 81 MEMORABLE songs in my Overview post, which is far less than the […]

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Best songs of 1946: Wrap Up 2

Noorjehan-Amirbai Karnataki-Shamshad Begum-Suraiya

November 9, 2019

And the SoY Award for the Best Female Playback Singer goes to? As the readers would recall from Wrap Up 1, the Award for the Best Male Solo turned out to be a one-horse race, thanks to KL Saigal’s superlative songs in the film Shahjahan, composed equally superbly by the Great Mughal Naushad. Lata Mangeshkar […]

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Best songs of 1946: Wrap Up 1

KL Saigal-GM Durrani-Surendra-Rafi-Mukesh

June 26, 2019

And the SoY Award for the Best Male Playback Singer goes to? Now we come to category-wise discussion of the best songs, following from my overview post on the Best songs of 1946. Understandably, the total number of MEMORABLE SONGS mentioned in the post (81) was the lowest so far in the series on year-wise […]

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Best songs of 1946: And the winners are?

April 11, 2019

As I started traversing back from the 1950s to the 40s in the year-wise review of film songs, I mentioned that we are entering the era of more unknown than the known. This is best exemplified by the year 1946: Out of 153 films in the year, nothing is known about five films, whether its […]

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Best songs of 1947: Final Wrap Up 4

Naushad_C Ramchandra_Husnlal-Bhagatram_Khursheed Anwar

December 4, 2018

And the Award for the Best Music Director goes to? After the Overview post and the three category-wise wrap ups: Wrap Up 1 for the best male solo, Wrap Up 2 for the best female solo and Wrap Up 3 for the best duets – it is time to collate and discuss the dominant music […]

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Best songs of 1947: Wrap Up 3

October 11, 2018

And the Song of Yore Award for the Best Duet goes to? The total number of duets in the list of ‘Memorable Songs’ in the Overview post on the best songs of 1947 is about 30 out of 119. This is about 50% more than the male solos, but less than half the female solos. […]

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