Om Shanti Om (soundtrack)

Om Shanti Om is the soundtrack to the 2007 film of the same name directed by Farah Khan, produced by Gauri Khan through Red Chillies Entertainment and starred Shah Rukh Khan, Arjun Rampal and Deepika Padukone (in her film debut). The film's soundtrack featured six original songs, four remixes and an instrumental track, all of them were composed by Vishal–Shekhar, and written by Javed Akhtar, Kumaar and Vishal Dadlani, except for one song composed by Pyarelal of the Laxmikant–Pyarelal duo. The soundtrack was released by T-Series on 9 September 2007 to critical acclaim and was one of the highest-selling music albums of the year.

To date, this was the last time singers Udit Narayan and Abhijeet Bhattacharya provided their voices as playback singers to Shah Rukh Khan. The two men were synonymous as a singer-actor jodi combo for many of his previous films.

Development and release
A. R. Rahman was initially signed in to compose music for the film but he opted out after disagreements with T-Series as he wanted them to share the copyrights of music between him and the label. Later Vishal–Shekhar was hired to score music for the film, in their maiden collaboration with both Shah Rukh and Farah. The duo had composed for few television advertisements directed by Farah, and with her rapport, they had been recommended to Red Chillies Entertainment for their recruitment as composers.

The duo recalled that they grew up listening to music of the 1960s and 1970s and wanted the soundtrack to be a tribute to the music of that particular era while appealing to newer audiences at the same time. The song "Dhoom Taana" was composed by Pyarelal of the Laxmikant–Pyarelal duo. Pyarelal stopped composing after his partner Laxmikant's death in May 1998, but owing to Farah Khan's request on composing a song as a tribute to Hindi film music of the 1970s and 1980s, he agreed at the insistence of his wife and daughter. The song was recorded with a 150-member-orchestra and traditional instruments like drums, tabla, dholak and dafli, which was a trademark of the duo and more than 40 different percussion instruments had been used. Vishal–Shekhar also helped Pyarelal on orchestrating and arranging the tunes.

Reception
Joginder Tuteja's review for Bollywood Hungama summarised the music as "one of the complete scores" from Vishal–Shekhar, giving four stars out of five. Sukanya Verma of Rediff.com also gave it four stars out of five, with praise for the music, but criticised the "Dark Side" mix. Writing for AllMusic, Bhaskar Gupta gave the album four-and-a-half stars out of five, summarizing "Vishal-Shekhar finally delivered a soundtrack that could be deemed their signature offering."

Sales and records
Vishal–Shekhar who were judges at the Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2007 reality show has given an interview to Rediff.com, recalled that Himesh Reshammiya (fellow composer and one of the judges) had said that the album as well as the film would be commercially successful even before release. It was the highest-selling music album of the year in India, with sales of around 2 million units.