Shashwat Sachdev’s love songs for spies

The composer talks about creating the eclectic, ambitious soundtracks for the record-breaking ‘Dhurandhar’ films

- Devarsi Ghosh

If Shashwat Sachdev had got his way, Dhurandhar would have kicked off with an 8-minute version of Queen’s barn stomper Another One Bites The Dust, complete with Sikkimese metal singer Girish Pradhan singing Freddie Mercury’s lines, a bass solo from Mohini Dey, and sundry qawwali bits.

The Freddie Mercury estate, which had earlier approved of the song’s use in Aditya Dhar’s blockbuster, pulled the plug last minute on seeing the gore in the 4-minute trailer.

Though it does end with John Deacon's bassline over the vocals in Ishq Jalakar—the repurposed Sahir Ludhianvi qawwali, Na To Karavan Ki Talash Hai from Barsaat Ki Raat (1960)—the final track in the film and the album itself has a different bassline Dey recorded within a day of the Queen tribute getting nixed.

“Aditya (Dhar) was insistent on beginning the film with Another One Bites The Dust,” Sachdev recalls while adding that he is still busy fine-tuning the master copies on the albums of Dhurandhar (2025) and Dhurandhar: The Revenge (2026) on streaming platforms.

What sounds like a clean, thoughtful, ambitious collage of 28 songs—a mix of original tunes and reworked classics—was created by Sachdev and his team over a hectic six months. The soundtrack shows a thoughtful cohesiveness in lyrics and composition alongside an envelope-pushing edge in sound production that’s hard to come by in contemporary Bollywood music. Sachdev, 39, had previously composed for the 2019 blockbuster Uri: The Surgical Strike, which served as a laboratory for the hip-hop/rock/electronic trifecta he is at exceptional ease with.

Both halves of Dhar’s 450-minute spy-action thriller, released across December and March, together have become India's highest-grossing film of all time. In an interview with Lounge, Sachdev explains the frantic construction of the film’s soundscape. Edited excerpts.