When Rohan Utpat and Vinayak Salvi, better known as Rohan-Vinayak, were composing Lalla, they were striving to make a song that was authentic to the gritty world of Subedaar. Now that the number has started climbing the charts, following the Anil Kapoor-starrer’s release, the composer duo isn’t exactly surprised. What about the song has appealed to listeners? “It’s difficult to pinpoint one thing,” says Rohan.  

Vishal Dadlani

If he had to break it down, the composer would peg it to three aspects. “The first is the word Lalla itself,” Rohan reflects, before adding, “Then there’s the string-section melody that comes in between the song, and finally, Vishal Dadlani’s powerful vocals under the fast-beat drums. Those three things together have stayed with listeners. We deliberately didn’t load the lyrics with a lot of melodic movement. Rishi Upadhyay’s [lyricist] song was meant to feel almost like a narrative. Holding back the melody and then releasing it at the right moment helped keep the song effective.”

Anil Kapoor in the film

Subedaar’s background score works on the opposite principle. It knows exactly when to step forward. Rohan recalls that as director Suresh Triveni narrated the story, which is centred on a retired Army officer who has to fight again, the musicians understood that the score would require restraint in places and eruption in others. He explains, “For a large part of the movie, the hero avoids fights. So, the music had to build tension. But when he hits someone for the first time, we kept pure fight sound effects.”

With the track gaining attention, the question arises: can a song become bigger than the movie it belongs to? Vinayak says, “Sometimes a song begins its own journey. If people connect with it independently, there’s nothing wrong with that. Ultimately the effort is to create strong audio-visual storytelling.”

Films that Rohan-Vinayak previously composed for:

‘Nil Battey Sannata’; ‘102 Not Out’ and ‘Lootcase’