2004: A year of melody, rock and jazz

2004 was a good year for the Hindi music lovers. The best part was a wide range of variety that was offered to an audience. For every ‘ Murder ' there was a ‘ Dhoom ', for every ‘ Main Hoon Naa ' there was a ‘ Kisna '. Not to take away from the fact that there were some down right rejects as well, but to end the year on a positive note, we will be highlighting some of the best albums of the year (there were 13 of these, instead of a traditional Top-10 that were overall successes). Also there will be a list of some of those that weren't HIT in totality but still enthralled the masses, some of those albums that had at least one catchy number that went on to become a HIT and some of the off-beat movies that had quality music.

13 Blockbuster albums that swayed the nation

Murder

If there is a song that has a potential to be sung even during 2005 Valentines, it is ‘ Bheege Hoth Tere '. The song that made Kunal Ganjawala a household name, it is an irony that such a beautifully composed romantic love album by Anu Malik has a name that goes with the ‘Killing'. Proves the saying that ‘love actually kills'! If ‘ Kaho Na Kaho ' was an instant hit too, 60s style ‘ Dil Ko Hazaar Baar ' caught up soon as well.

Main Hoon Naa

Second in succession at the top for Anu Malik, this was a Nasir Hussain style of movie-making set in Riverdale's campus. The results were for everyone to be seen with ‘ Tumse Milke Dil Ka', ‘Chale Jaise Hawayein', Title song, ‘Tumhe Jo Maine' and a bouquet of other feel-good songs still ruling the charts at one countdown or another.

Veer Zaara

The songs weren't exactly the best ever composed in Indian cinema, nor were they all masterpiece creations that took the music industry by storm. But immense hype regarding Late Madan Mohan's music recreated by Sanjiv Kohli, Yash Chopra's return to direction after 7 years, King Khan's towering stature at the box office, blockbuster feel of the movie, Lataji's return to singing in a big way and some genuinely good tunes like ‘ Main Yahan Hoon', ‘ Tere Liye ' and ‘ Do Pal ' amongst others ensured that the songs set the charts ablaze since the time the album hit the stores. The score is still selling good and is already at the top of the sales charts.

Kisna

Unarguably the best album of 2004 in terms of grandeur, style, substance and quality, ‘ Kisna ' proved once again that in a Subhash Ghai movie there is just one music composer – SUBHASH GHAI. So what if A.R. Rehman and Ismail Darbar are the joint composers for the tracks in ‘ Kisna ', with your ears open and eyes closed you can sense that songs like ‘ Hum Hai Is Pal Yahann', ‘Wo Kisna Hai', ‘Tu Itni Pagli Kyo Hai' and ‘ Mujhme Shiv Hai ' are more from Subhash Ghai school of music (the roots can be traced all the way back to ‘ Hero', ‘Ram Lakhan', ‘Saudagar' ) than anything else. Sales have already skyrocketed and set to zoom on further with the publicity getting more intense in January 2005.

Dhoom

‘ Dhoom Machale ' – this is what the message from Yash Chopra, Aditya Chopra and Sanjay Gadhvi would have been to composer Pritam (who turned solo after composing a couple of albums with Jeet). For this is what Pritam actually did with blockbuster songs like the two versions of the title song with Sunidhi Chauhan and Tata Young, ‘ Shikdum ', ‘ Dilbara ' and ‘ Salaame '. The dark horse proved to be a winner all the way, in-spite of being shunned by the critics in the start to be too ‘non-Chopra' style. The money spending ‘junta' thought otherwise and lapped on to the album in dozens. Result – a rocking HIT across the nation with the signature tune being the hot favorite in the mobile ring-tone circuit!

Hum Tum

This started a good spell for Chopra banner in 2005. Satisfying all the criteria of a Chopra musical score with a ‘ ched-chaad ' song ‘ Ladki Kyon ', a shaadi byaah song ‘ Gore Gore ', a feel-good number ‘ Chak De ', a romantic number ‘ Sanson Ko Sanson ' and the instant youth hit ‘ Mere Dil Vich Hai Hum Tum ', it had all the necessary ingredients to be one of the initial hits of 2004. Jatin Lalit made their presence felt once again in the big league and followed up with good scores in ‘ Rok Sako To Rok Lo ' and ‘ Chand Sa Roshan Chehra '.

Musafir

This is an album for the one who is a ‘musafir' and is on a journey. Rocking, pulsating, enthralling, enchanting and energetic – this is how one describes the musical score of Musafir that was released in an additional ‘First-of-its-kinds' lounge version (by Nikhil Chinnappa) to woo today's audience, which has been hooked on to the this trend. While Anand Raj Anand's single ‘ Ishq Kabhi Kariyo Naa ' being the biggest hit of the album, others like ‘Saki', ‘ Door Se Paas', ‘Rabba', ‘Tez Dhar' and ‘ Sun Suniyo ' by the duo of Vishal-Shekhar were all good in their own ways and as a collection made for a best music on a fast'n'long drive.

Mujhse Shaadi Karogi

Rejected by critics on the very first day of release, this album turned out to be a surprise winner and caught everyone off-guard with bumper sales. Boosted by, what can be termed as the best publicized movie of 2004, imaginative choreography by Farah Khan, new age direction by David Dhawan, high profile starcast and good tunes by Sajid Wajid that caught up in a big way over the period of time, the music of MSK is still selling like hot cakes. The Title song, ‘ Jeene Ke Hai Char Din ', ‘ Laal Duppatta ' and Aaja Soniye ' were the pick of the lots.

Bewafaa

A melodious way to end 2004, ‘ Bewafaa ' came at a very right time when there wasn't much happening on the music scene apart from Veer Zaara and Musafir . Nadeem Shravan, Dharmesh Darshan, Sameer, Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor were too good a combination that won't succeed and the album proved to be a runaway success. Signature tune of ‘ Ik Dilruba Hai ' caught up instantly and the presence of Lataji, Ghulam Ali saab and other established singers like Alka Yagnik, Udit Narayan and Sonu Nigam proved a winner for TIPS.

Lakshya

Lakshya is one album that could have done much better than it actually did in a long run. If ‘ Main Aisa Kyon Hoon ' was an experiment succeeding big time, the oriental tune of ‘ Agar Main Kahoon ' and the patriotic feel of the Title song were popular as well. The combination of Shankar Ehsaan Loy and Javed Akhtar came up with a meaningful score set well in the contemporary style once again but a relatively short run at the theatres and lack of continued publicity halted the album from becoming one of the bigger success stories of 2004.

Fida

The peppiest album of 2004, ‘ Fida ' never pretended to be path-breaking or something that would break new grounds. It came with a sole aim of entertaining masses and providing good clean unadulterated tunes. Anu Malik was expected to compose bubble-gum tunes for the real life ‘jodi' of Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapoor and justified the belief shown in him with tunes like ‘ Aaja Ve Mahi Let's Do Balle Balle ', ‘ Nazar Nazar ', ‘ Janeman Hua Main Fida ' amongst others. The music was launched just 3-4 weeks before the movie's release and was a rage in a short span. Pity the movie didn't last this long a duration, else it would have been amongst the Top-5 most selling albums of 2004 by now.

Aitraaz

Himesh Reshammiya was a busy composer in 2004 with multiple big, medium and small budget movie releases. But Mukta Arts' Aitraaaz was the biggest of all that catapulted him into the list of A-class composers. He justified his choice as a sole composer for this big movie that starred Akshay Kumar, Kareena Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra. Almost all the songs made a place for themselves over the period of time with ‘ I Want To Make Love To You', ‘W