crazy kiyaa re!

Who would have thought that Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy would one day join the renegade Anu Malik in the S*xy Hall of Fame? With 13B's Oh S*xy Mama the trio notch several points with the song. We'll get to Neelesh Mishra's fine lyrics fine. A thumping bass and a vocoder-ised voice cannot prepare you enough for a familiar voice breaking in with the mukha.Daa (तीखी तीखी आँखें बोलें). Wait a rapping minute. That's Mr. Harjit Singh Sehgal himself. When was the last time you heard that voice? And it has to be the first time he's worked for SEL. He shares the microphone with Anushka Manchanda and Loy Mendonsa. While the song doesn't scale the heights defined by the title song of Mission Istaanbul, it still manages something memorable for collectors of the ridiculously sublime in the chorus:

oh s*xy mama
won't you do the saa re gaa maa
won't you do the saa re gaa maa
yo s*xy s*xy mama

तेरे बिन रस्ते मैं भूलूँ
तेरे बिन कैसे मैं जी लूं
तेरे बिन क्या मैं beer या ज़हर पी लूं

In an ironic twist, the censorious board decided to return to the prudish antiquated ways of the past and deemed the word offensive, forcing the producers to take the easy way out and overdub crazy instead of the s-word in the promotional clips playing on various cable channels. The song remains untouched in the soundtrack for Yavarum Nalum, the Tamil version of the film. Moreover, the scissors have run differently for the Hindi and Tamil versions: the Hindi one's getting an 'A' certificate while the Tamile one is going to relish the wonderfully ambiguous 'U/A' certificate.

The other tunes on the soundtrack are a moderate mixed bag. ba.De se shahar me.n sports SEL touches and has Karthik doing an Abhijeet imitation. aasmaa.N o.Dh kar's gentle pop is destroyed by the presence of Chitra. sab khairiyat hai might qualify as SEL's shortest song on record: the theme for a TV show in the film comes up shorter than Ram Sampath's Quick Byte on Family: Ties Of Blood. The album's laced with an obligatory remix of every song; the remix of this short track burgeons into a bouncy catchy 4 minute version saved from derision by the incessant opening on snare and hi-hat, a composite electro-clap beat and a coda laced with an electric guitar solo peppered with fervent bends.

Tubby (Indrajit Sharma) and Parik (Parikshit Sharma), with a bucket of credits for arranging and producing film soundtracks, toss in the theme for the film employing clichéd dissonance, ominous piano, threatening strings, moody dark cellos, frenetic interplay, trip hop, tributes to Sandeep Chowta and the obligatory choir.