Raavan
A. R. Rahman

When artistes of the caliber of Rahman, Mani Rathnam and Gulzar come together, sounds of Roja, Bombay and Dil Se start making rounds in mind. But the music of Raavan comes nowhere close to those classics in terms of quality as well as popular appeal.

The soundtrack relies a lot on rousing, rhythmic and robust folksy tunes like Beera (Vijay Prakash- Mustafa Kutaone), Thok De Killi (Sulhvinder) and Kata Kata (Kunal Ganjawala, Ila Arun, Sapna Awasthi). The first happens to be the theme-song describing the villainous central character; the second is a group-song with political undertones and last one is a raunchy marriage-number.

Karthik's flowing modern romantic song Behne De and Reena Bhardwaj's mushy semi-classical Khili Re are composed in typically appealing Rahman- style. But Rekha Bhardwaj- Javed Ali's Punjabi- flavoured romantic duet Ranjha Ranjha somehow sounds alien from the rest.

Overall, this album is too situational and as stand-alone music, it leaves much to desire!