The music of Johnny Gaddaar is surprising. It shocks you. It seems to be a deliberate and forced attempt to create something off-beat.
SEL have been super-successful and created great music in the past few years. From 'Kal Ho Naa Ho' to 'KANK', then more recently 'JBJ' and 'Heyy Babyy' have all been musically excellent. I and every other music buffs expect good music from them. But, after listening to 'Johnny Gaddaar', we come back home with a good title track and lots of noise. Experimenting with music is definitely good, but noise in the name of music is certainly not acceptable. Let's go to the songs/background scores (as they seem).
The album starts with the title track which was earlier released in a mini disc. I hope they stopped there. The track is pretty good and grows largely on you after 4-5 plays. Newcomer Suraj Jagan sings well in a dark voice. Still untapped potential of Akriti Kakar provides him a great company.
SEL come to the mike with Hardkaur to 'Move' their 'body'. Actually the tune of 'Move Your Body' is bland and boring and the beats fail to create an impact. If you are a fan of the UK-Bhangra songs, you can give it a hear.
'Dhoka' is a song with an out and out 80s disco feel to it. The rendition is not bad, but the tune sounds outdated and cheap. Lukewarm.
'Johnny In The House' is a remix version of the title track. It is a good hear, but does not add much to the value of the album.
In case of 'Move Your Body (Phatt Mix)', the original isn't good, how can the mix be?
Then begins the most horrible part of the album. 6 music pieces, of which 5 are mainly instrumental in nature. They seem to be picked out from a 70s Hindi film background score and are annoying. Specially 'Johnny Breakbeat Mera Naam' (Probably gives 'tribute' to 'Johnny Mera Naam') is annoying music at its worst. At places, the utterance of the dialogues "Bol Kya Naam Hai Tera?""Johnny" simply irritates a big time. If you are in a mood to be irritated, give it a listen. The other four instrumental pieces are plain bad.
Last comes 'Bhule Bisre Geet', which is not a song of the same name, but, it is an assortment of three 'Bhule Bisre' songs. The album hits an all-time low here. The first part of theese songs 'Ghadi ki suinya tick tick' mimics the 50s songs. The second part 'Dil siya na dil liya' resembles the songs like 'Piya Tu Ab To Aa Ja' and is somewhat better than the other parts. (Don't think I am comparing it with legendary 'Piya Tu'. It is just for reference.)
The last part 'Yeh zindagi ke raaste hai haseen' mimics Kishore Kumar and is the worst part in the album. I couldn't get how can they mimic HIM? It is so bad, you won't want to keep your music system on anymore.
As a whole, Johnny Gaddaar is an attempt to create off-beat soundtrack for an Hindi film. But off-beat necessarily doesn't mean good, and here it has gone terribly wrong. This is probably the worst album ever by SEL. Barring the title track nothing is good in the album. Don't go for it.