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

Best songs of year

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

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

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?

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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Best songs of 1950: Final Wrap Up 5

November 22, 2015

The SoY Award for the Best Music Director goes to? This year’s detailed review had more songs (152) than in any preceding year, and I had hoped that this would cover most of the noteworthy songs. Nevertheless, the readers added a large number of songs in the comments. This shows that there are a number […]

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Best songs of 1950: Wrap Up 4

November 11, 2015

Songs of Yore Award for the Best Duet goes to? (Wishing Happy Diwali to everyone) Hans recently commented in some other context that duets generally create less impact than solos. This is certainly true of tennis where the doubles players are not counted in the same league as Federers and Djokovics. In the olden days before the open […]

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Best songs of 1950: Wrap Up 3

October 19, 2015

(After the overview post on the Best songs of 1950, I have written Wrap Up 1 on the best male solos, and Wrap Up 2 on the best female solos by ‘other’ singers. Continuing the series, here is the third Wrap Up on the best songs of Lata Mangeshkar. – AK) Songs of Yore Award for the Best Female […]

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Best songs of 1950: Wrap Up 2

Suraiya, Rajkumari, Shamshad Begum, Geeta Dutt

August 29, 2015

And the award for the Best ‘Other’ Female Singer goes to? This year, too, I faced the familiar dilemma I faced last year while reviewing the best songs of 1951: whether to make a combined list of the best female solos or split it in two – Lata Mangeshkar and ‘Others’. Male solos which I […]

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Best songs of 1950: Wrap Up 1

Talat Mahmood, Mukesh, Rafi and Manna Dey

July 12, 2015

Songs of Yore Award for the Best Male Playback Singer goes to? The year 1950 too shows, like 1951, that male solos were far outnumbered by female solos (by about a factor of 4), both in the total songs and in my Select List which comprised about 15% of the total songs of the year. […]

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