Has a song programmer composed a track for Metro and Pritam received the credit?

By Bollywood Hungama -

July 18, 2007 - 12:00 AM IST

Pritam is extremely upset about a baseless allegation against him that is making the rounds in media circles for last few days now! As per reports in the Kolkata edition of leading newspaper, Pritam's programmer was the man behind his immensely successful track 'O Meri Jaan' from the film 'Life In A...Metro'. "Not just is the report baseless", explodes Pritam, "it also comes at a wrong time, especially when the film is a hit and the music has proved to be a blockbuster ever since it released. Imagine you are required to even answer to such stupid quotes when you had rather move on and work on creating an even better soundtrack." There certainly would have been some reason for something as serious as this to come on print. What exactly happened? "Irresponsible writing, simple", says a visibly upset Pritam, "Otherwise if someone else would have composed a song, why it would have come under my name? What I had told the journalist was that the piano riff of 'O Meri Jaan' which is similar to the beginning guitar riff of silent lucidity is played by my programmer. That's about it; the song has nothing to do with it." Though it may not really be required for Pritam to comment on something as trivial as that, does he have any evidence to support his cause. "I don't know if I should actually be reacting like this to each and every allegation that comes my way but this time around let me take this up. Let me play for you the first ever recorded version of 'O Meri Jaan' in the sound clip. At that time it was called 'Tu Muskura'", says Pritam while playing the original sound clip. "One hearing and it will make it clear that it has nothing to do with silent lucidity. This version is sung by Kunal Ganjawala while the lyrics were written by Mayur Puri. The song was recorded at Yashraj recording studios way back in August 2006", details Pritam. So why was the original version not retained for 'Life In A...Metro'? "At that time we were not happy with this version", Pritam makes a candid confession, "Hence we reworked on the orchestration and lyrics from scratch. Since Kunal Ganjawala was not in the country during that time, the revised version (now titled 'O Meri Jaan') had KK coming in. This version is not mixed and is a straight dump from the studio after the song dub for listening purpose; hence it has slightly sub-standard quality." Well, the song does sound different. "Yes, it is. The first 'antara' is an alternative 'antara' to the existing one. This was just for Anurag's [Basu] listening so that we could decide on which of the versions to retain. On close hearing you would realize that except for the unintentional piano riff, the song has nothing to do with silent lucidity." This certainly rests his case. But what about alleged similarities between other track from 'Metro', 'In Dino Dil Mera', with a Wakar Ali track? "Untrue yet again. For the song 'In Dinon Dil Mera', there is just a two line similarity with Wakar Ali's song. And by the way, even that is unintentional. I asked Anurag about it later and even he was taken by surprise. He heard the song in a party as an old 'ghazal' and somehow the line containing 'Izazat - Mohabbat' stuck in his head for days", signs off Pritam with a smile.