Pakistani singer Shiraz Uppal and Jaswinder Singh create a crescendo of melody in the title track of Raanjhanaa. The song carries all classic Rahman elements – superb orchestration combining elements of the milieu and story in the soundtrack.  It is  sung superbly by Shreya Ghoshal, Anwesha Datta Gupta and Meenal Jain.  

The heavy duty sufi song, Piya milenge, inspired by Meerabai’s famous bhajan, Ghunghat ke pat khol take you to spiritual heights. Rahman has always done experimental stuff with sufi compositions and here too the use of KMMC Sufi Ensemble along with ever reliable Sukhwinder Singh makes it fabulous.  

Ay sakhi, sung by Madhushree, Chinmayi, Vaishali and Aanchal Sethi is almost an A cappella composition. The lyrics mimic Amir Khusro’s writings. It’s a fun song which takes the classical motifs of traditional Hindi poetry and weaves a modern fantasy about love and longing.  

Rashid Ali, Neeti Mohan, Nakash Aziz combine to make Nazar laaye, which reminds you of early Rahman, extremely hummable.   It combines elements of various genres to bring you a bouquet of sounds which   grows on you upon repeated listening. This and the Blues-inspired Aise na dekho (sung by Rahman and Karthik), which is the composer’s attempt to create a proper Blues song for Hindi audience is very experimental and on has to see how it works. 

Tum tak  is vintage Rahma.. Javed Ali, Pooja Vaidyanath and Keerthi Sagathia combine to make this one a winner as well. The album also pays homage to the local deity of Benares, in the ever so short instrumental, The land of Shiva, which reminds you of vigorous temple chants in its brief existence.

AR Rahman never ceases to amazes and I suspect this may be the case with this album as well.