Bollywood Pop
tagStarted 1992Peak 1998-2012Last big hit still active
Big-budget Hindi film soundtrack pop: playback-sung dance and romance numbers lifted from movies, fusing qawwali, bhangra and classical Indian melody with orchestral sweep, electronic beats and pop choruses. Maximalist and percussive—massed strings, dhol, layered playback vocals—engineered to anchor a film's marketing and dominate radio simultaneously.
History
As composers like A.R. Rahman modernized film scoring in the 1990s, soundtrack songs became blockbuster pop in their own right. 'Chaiyya Chaiyya' (Dil Se, 1998) and the Oscar-winning 'Jai Ho' (Slumdog Millionaire, 2008) carried Bollywood pop worldwide, while playback stars like Sukhwinder Singh, Sunidhi Chauhan and Shreya Ghoshal became household names across the diaspora.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaiyya_Chaiyya
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukhwinder_Singh
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._R._Rahman
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollywood_music