Discussing and dissecting the bygone year’s highs and lows has always been everyone’s favourite pastime. So, let’s indulge into the arm-chair analysis of 2007’s Indian popular music scene.

It was a year when the music-company-executives mostly kept cribbing about bad reviews and diminishing sales. We won’t really blame them. The illegal MP3 downloads are already eating up into their music sales but the overall mediocre quality of contemporary music is also not helping the situation. This year, too amongst hundreds of albums only a few stood out for their freshness, innovation and originality and more often than not, they were the successful ones at the cash registers.

Various composers like Monty Sharma (Saawariya) Shantanu Moitra (Khoya Khoya Chand), Rabbi Shergil (Delhi Heights), Ilaiya Raja (Cheeni Kum), Mithoon (Train), Lesley Lewis (Apna Aasman) and Anand Raj Anand (Chhodo Na Yaar) gave some good film-music this year. Pritam (A Life In Metro, Jab We Met, Kya Love-story Hai) and Vishal- Shekhar (Tararumpum, Om Shanti Om, Honeymoon Travels, Cash) were the busiest composers of the year and besides the routine fillers, they also managed to dish out quite a few good songs.

The top guns Shankar- Ehsan- Loy had a mixed year as their music in Salaam-E-Ishq, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom and Hey Babyy proved popular but that in Marigold and Johnny Gaddar failed to score high. Last year’s craze- Himesh Reshammiya found the fickleness of fame as apart from a successful Aap Ka Surroor and Namstey London, his music (and his own songs!) in albums like Good Boy Bad Boy, Red, Fear and Darling found no takers. After all, how long one can repeat (and tolerate!) the same formula!

In non-film albums, only a few like The Ustad & The Divas (Ustad Sultan Khan with Sunidhi, Shreya and Chitra), Kisi Din (Adnan Sami) and Saadgi (Lata Mangeshkar) were worth listening to.

Nowadays new unconventional voices are constantly making their presence felt. So names like Hamsika Iyer (Khushboo Se), Shail Hada (Saaw