THREE CHEERS

EVEN AFTER 25 YEARS OF MAKING MUSIC TOGETHER, SHANKAR-EHSAAN-LOY ARE NOT DONE BELTING OUT HITS

- Tatsam Mukherjee

Shankar Mahadevan has been watching The Family Man and seems to be enjoying Manoj Bajpayee’s new superstar celebrity. “Remember Shool (1999)?” Ehsaan Noorani asks, referring to one of their earliest hits—‘UP Bihar Lootne’, a song seemingly far from the ShankarEhsaan-Loy oeuvre, but one that became a rage in the late 1990s. Loy Mendonsa shares an anecdote he heard: “They had to stop the film in the theatre because people would be throwing money at the screen.” Mahadevan adds how Bajpayee (the film’s male lead) had rightly predicted the mania even before the release. The song is a fine exhibition of the trio’s ability to immerse themselves and compose something authentic to the film’s setting, even if it’s outside their ‘comfort zone’.

In a world where creative partnerships are usually fraught with egos, these three composers have been going strong for over 25 years. If this wasn’t a good enough reason to sit down with one of Hindi cinema’s game-changing composers (not a title to be thrown around lightly in the Rahman era), this year clocks 20 years of their breakout album, Dil Chahta Hai. Plus, they have a new soundtrack—Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Toofaan, releasing on July 16.

Coming together for Mukul Anand’s Dus (1997), the trio has been credited with over 79 films in six languages, and one series,