7 Khoon Maaf (soundtrack)

7 Khoon Maaf is the soundtrack to the 2011 film of the same name directed, produced and composed by Vishal Bhardwaj starring Priyanka Chopra. The film's nine-song soundtrack featured lyrics written by Gulzar, Javed Sheikh and Ajinkya Iyer and released digitally on 24 January 2011 and in physical formats the following day. The album received positive reviews from music critics.

Background and release
Vishal Bhardwaj and Gulzar worked on the film's soundtrack, post their successive decade-long collaborations, while Javed Sheikh co-wrote "Bekaraan" with Gulzar and "O' Mama" by Ajinkya Iyer. The song "Darling" is inspired by the Russian folk song "Kalinka". The track itself featured Russian words in the lyrics as in the film's context, one of Susanna's husbands was Russian. Bhardwaj brought four singers from Russia to record the vocals, and also credited the track on the album cover as well as the film. "Tere Liye", sung by Suresh Wadkar, was not used in the film. The soundtrack was digitally released via Ovi (Nokia) internet service on 24 January 2011, and via CD on 25 January 2011. Chopra and Bhardwaj launched the album at the Radio City and Radio Mirchi offices in Mumbai, where all the songs aired live on those stations during the physical release.

Reception
The Indo-Asian News Service gave the album 3.5 stars (out of 5), described it as a "a wonderful album that is not a clone of his previous work. It exudes freshness and is worth listening." Joginder Tuteja of Bollywood Hungama rated the album a 3 (out of 5), summarising "7 Khoon Maaf is a good album with a couple of definite hits, couple of skip worthy ones and the remaining have the potential to grow." The Hindustan Times noted that the soundtrack takes the listener through a variety of moods and wrote "Bhardwaj has certainly succeeded in adding new sounds to his catalogue. He continues to evade Bollywood monotony with this soundtrack [...] an innovative effort." Vipin Nair of Music Aloud gave 8.75 (out of 10) calling it as "superb soundtrack from Vishal Bhardwaj that once again underlines his versatility". Karthik Srinivasan of Milliblog described it as "vibrant" and "delectable".