Mohabbatein (soundtrack)
Mohabbatein is the soundtrack album to the 2000 film of the same name directed by Aditya Chopra and produced by Yash Chopra under Yash Raj Films. The soundtrack featured seven original songs and two instrumental themes, composed by Jatin–Lalit and lyrics written by Anand Bakshi, and the vocals were a combination of debutants and seasoned singers. The soundtrack was released through Saregama label on 21 January 2000 to positive reviews and was commercially successful, receiving accolades.
Development
The duo Jatin–Lalit composed Mohabbatein soundtrack and the lyrics were written by Anand Bakshi, reuniting with Aditya after Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. To ensure the freshness in its music, the duo enlisted six debutant singers for the debutant actors in the background: Ishaan, Manohar Shetty, Pritha Mazumdar, Shweta Pandit, Sonali Bhatawdekar, and Udhbhav, had recorded the songs while Lata Mangeshkar, Udit Narayan, and Jaspinder Narula supplied vocals for Aishwarya Rai, Shah Rukh Khan and Archana Puran Singh, respectively.Since the film revolved around three different love stories, Lalit insisted to have six different voices and thought it was "a good idea to have fresh voices for the newcomers so that it also helps the album sound fresh". As the music for Mohabbatein, were subjective to comparison on other films from the banner, which had successful soundtracks, they had to ensure the music should be fresh. Lalit added that using established singers, would take away the freshness the album needed, which resulted in the duo to search for new singers. After finalizing them, he signed a contract with them so that they would be in Bombay for rehearsals, and they have to work only on the film's songs for the entire duration of recording and rendering. When the songs were being fine-tuned, the singers had rehearsals every day for two months, as they had no practical knowledge on singing in front of a microphone and its vocals were raw. The duo had to conduct an in-studio voice test to ensure that their voices sound perfectly on the microphone.
Lalit stated that he and Jatin faced difficulties on training newcomers, unlike working with experienced singers, as they had to train them extensively and also sort out which singer suited the emotions of a particular character. The song "Soni Soni" had three different antaras for different characters, as "each couple has an identity, an attitude quite different from the other" and the voice being fixed at same character throughout the film. Unlike Narayan and Mangeshkar's songs, the rest of the music performed by the debutants had a group song touch to them.