In the last few years, a trend seems to have entered the Hindi film industry. It’s not the norm yet but every time it’s applied, the movie makes news. This trend is of featuring an international artist in a soundtrack for the film. The song achieves instant fame; the movie gets loads of attention and consequently, it manages to draw a large crowd to the theatres or at least earns good revenue from the music.
While there are several singers from our neighbouring country Pakistan who regularly record soundtracks for Bollywood movies, other big names including the likes of Snoop Dogg have also displayed their singing prowess in hindi movies.
Songs by international artists that have made waves on the Indian music scene:
Dhoom dhoom by Tata Young
This song was sung by the famous Thai artist for the movie Dhoom. The movie starred Abhishek Bachchan, John Abraham, Uday Chopra, Rimi Sen and Esha Deol among others. Young also featured in a video for the song which achieved instant success. It was among the first of the songs featuring international artists and touched the number one spot in several Asian countries. Young even released an EP (extended play) including this song soon after the success of the movie.
Chiggy Wiggy by Kylie Minogue
The Australian pop singer sang and performed this song for the movie Blue starring Akshay Kumar, Sanjay Dutt, Zaheer Khan, Lara Dutta and Katrina Kaif. The song also contained a portion in Punjabi sung by the talented Sonu Nigam. It was the most promoted song of the film and became a rage almost immediately. The song was picturised as nightclub scene in the movie and had featured the singer herself dancing to its tunes.
Singh is Kinng by RDB feat Snoop Dogg
The title track for the Akshay Kumar starrer was among the most successful songs from the movie. The makers roped in the famous American rap artist Snoop Dogg to sing the song along with RDB (Rhythm Dhol bass), the UK based Punjabi singers and DJ’s. A catchy and fun song to listen to, it became quite popular around the time the movie released and for some time afterwards.
Chamak Challo by Akon
This recently released song from the movie Ra.One seems to have tasted success already. Even before its release, the news of a song by the popular artist Akon had been doing the rounds. The beats of the song will get your foot tapping and the song is rather catchy. Seems like a good start for SRK’s movie which will release in October.
It is not like there is a dearth of talent in our homeland that we need to turn to international artists to popularise the music of our very own movies, but mixing things up helps give a refreshing touch to the songs sometimes. It is also true that music knows no boundaries. If collaborations between artists from different countries, and hence a mixing of cultures, can make us sing and dance, then why not go with it? What better way to spread ‘harmony’ in the world, I’d say 😛
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