2016 was the year of bangers in Bollywood.
The soundscape of 2016 reflected a consumerist confidence.
Over the last decade, original compositions have ceded space to remixes, nostalgia mining, and algorithm-friendly hooks.
2016 was the year of bangers in Bollywood. It was the year even middling scripts arrived cushioned by immaculate soundtracks. You may not even remember Baar Baar Dekho but probably still continue to belt out “Kala Chashma” at the top of your lungs at every desi function. You have probably nursed a heartache or two to the tunes of Fitoor, another Katrina Kaif-starrer that turned out to be a dud that year. And then there was Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, which had an entire OST that became a mood board for the urban youth in 2016.
In a year where mainstream movies battled for identity, gender, politics edged into popular narrative and franchise culture was tightening its grip, the music that accompanied these films was diverse and enduring. Pakistani vocalists like Atif Aslam and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan were still regular fixtures in Bollywood soundtracks before Indo-Pak tensions tightened cross-border artistic exchange.
The soundscape of 2016 reflected a consumerist confidence. India’s startup ecosystem was booming. Influencer culture was emerging. Luxury branding and self-made narratives were ascendant.
Pre-Gully Boy (2019), rap in Bollywood was also aspirational. Badshah and Raftaar appeared as brand-conscious stylists as opposed to political commentators. For example, Dhaakad’s (Dangal) rap interludes were more athletic and declarative instead of being oppositional or truly rebellious.
A decade is not long but the Hindi cinema music scene has devolved in this short span of time tremendously. Original compositions have ceded space to remixes, nostalgia mining, and algorithm-friendly hooks. Where 2016 offered full-bodied albums that ranged from being emotionally maximalist to thematic, much of today’s output is engineered for virality rather than longevity. The shift has been swift and brutal.
The Year of the Composers & Lyricists
In 2016, Amit Trivedi had three very different albums that showed off his stylistic range. In addition to the soulful songs of Fitoor, he had two other releases—Udta Punjab and Dear Zindagi. In Fitoor, he collaborated with lyricist Swanand Kirkire to weave motifs from Kashmiri folk music and poetic lyricism that were elevated by the vocal performances: Arijit Singh on “Yeh Fitoor Mera,” Trivedi himself on “Pashmina” and Zeb Bangash on “Haminastu.”
Udta Punjab’s searing soundtrack confronted drug abuse and systemic decay. While this film faced censorship battles on one hand, hyper-nationalist spectacle was consolidating its place in mainstream cinema on the other. “Ud-daa Punjab”, with lyrics by Varun Grover and vocals by Vishal Dadlani and Trivedi himself, was both a chart topper and a dramatic storytelling device within Udta Punjab. It encapsulated the film’s reverberating grit, pulsating with energy threaded with urgency. “Ikk Kudi” was set to the soulful verses from poet Shiv Kumar Batalvi. It juxtaposed tragedy and lyricism against the film’s raw storytelling. “Chitta Ve” and “Da Da Dasse” blended Hip-Hop and electronic flavours seamlessly.
Trivedi’s kaleidoscopic output across these different soundtracks merged folk, poetic lyricism and urban sonic textures. Trivedi, in short, belted out one banger after another (which could’ve been the alternative title to Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2025 rebellious action-thriller film).
If Trivedi brought a more contemplative but forgettable Millennial self-consciousness to the fore with Dear Zindagi tracks like “Just Go To Hell Dil” and “Love you Zindagi”, then Pritam gave it a zingier twist and the results were much more memorable.
Composed by Pritam with lyrics by Amitabh Bhattacharya and voices led by Arijit Singh, the Ae Dil Hai Mushkil soundtrack stands as one of his most memorable bodies of work. It became a late-year phenomenon. It was a rare case where an entire album had such massive recall value. The title track itself broke digital records on Indian streaming platforms, hitting over a million streams within 48 hours of release—an early sign of Bollywood’s streaming era translating into mainstream impact. “The Breakup Song” brought irreverence, “Channa Mereya” carried a semi-classical Sufi-tinged lament in its soul, and “Cutipie” tapped into the Millennial club culture sensibilities.
The party anthems did not begin or end with Ae Dil Hai Mushkil in 2016. “Kar Gayi Chull” from Kapoor & Sons came from an album that had multiple composers—an unusual bit of gamble. But it was this Amaal Mallik number, written by Kumaar and performed by Neha Kakkar, Badshah, Fazilpuri, and Sukriti Kakar that stood out for its rap, pop and Hip-Hop influences.
Composed and produced by Tapas Relia, “Damadam (Let’s Give Love a Chance)” from Dhanak saw a folk-flamenco crossover driven by Chet Dixon and Devu Khan Manganiyar. It experienced a revival almost a decade later through social media reels, demonstrating how 2016 songs continue to find new life in the cultural stream.
However, it wasn’t just folk, regional, Hip-Hop and electronica taking over the Bollywood soundtracks. “Kaari Kaari” (from Pink) carried a heart aching, semi-classical weight. Shantanu Moitra’s composition and Qurat-ul-Ain Balouch’s evocative vocals gave it a haunting lilt.
But “Are you a feminist?”
2016 was culturally saturated with “Are you a feminist?” discourse. While feminist themes dominated the industry with films like Pink, Parched and Dangal, every female actor had to face this question at every press event. The men were mostly spared, of course. And the answers that came our way to the tunes of “I am a humanist, not a feminist”, reflected the befuddled understanding of feminism in the mainstream at that time.
The music reflected this pop-feminist version of empowerment in that it was confident, Instagrammable and non-threatening enough for multiplex circulation.
We had songs like “Dhaakad”, which was all about championing hyper-confident female aggression. It was an out-and-out flex track, emblematic of the era’s growing rap influence. “The Breakup Song” mirrored the pop-feminist moment by celebrating casual post-relationship agency in women. We had “Nachde Ne Saare” (Baar Baar Dekho), which celebrated female joy without male gaze dominance. Tracks like “Kho Gaye Hum Kahan” and “Nachde Ne Saare” showcased Jasleen Royal’s arrival as a composer capable of blending indie sensibilities with filmy beats.
Mental health and Label-happy Millennials
If “Kho Gaye Hum Kahan” floated through late-night loneliness with digital-age melancholy, “Love You Zindagi” made existential drift a hummable vibe. This was not the tragic melodrama of the 1990s. This was how the urban Millennials were: bilingual, self-reflexive, emotionally literate, slightly performative. The men cried. The women processed. Therapy became the buzzword of the generation.
It is significant that Dear Zindagi—a film centred on mental health and psychological repair—produced songs that were so conversational. The music mirrored a generation comfortable with naming, labeling and finally learning to diagnose their feelings and mental state of being. This was before the conversation shifted again due to an overcorrection and we realised that pathologising every quirk and quality we possess may not be the best way to confront our inner selves.
Marketing and mayhem
If you were to make a playlist of every truly memorable 2016 song, you’d find tracks like Jabra Fan, a promotional number that practically became the film’s identity. Yash Raj Films rolled it out as a nationwide marketing device, commissioning versions in multiple regional languages including Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Bhojpuri and Punjabi. Each rendition was performed by local artists to mirror the pan-Indian fervour around Shah Rukh Khan’s stardom.
The song preceded the film, travelled further than it and in many ways overshadowed it. So much so that when it was excluded from the theatrical cut, a viewer filed a complaint before the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission in 2021, arguing that its omission amounted to unfair trade practice and seeking compensation. The Supreme Court eventually set aside the order, ruling that the studio was not liable. It was an unusual legal footnote, but also evidence of how deeply Hindi film songs structure audience expectation.
If Bollywood cinema in 2016 felt like a crossroads, its music was the ambient hum of that intersection. It registered the mood of the moment, reflecting the socio-political shifts and trends of the ever-shifting moral zeitgeist. It captured the atmosphere of a time marked by escalating political polarisation and economic precarity, right before the bubble of presumed prosperity and digital boom burst.
