Sing For Me: The Lost Art of Lip-Synced Songs

In a theatrical event no one saw coming, the Gen Z (and privately, even the Millennials and Boomers) were reduced to tears and applause in a sequence from the blockbuster Saiyaara when Ahaan Panday’s Krish Kapoor poured his heart out to the haunting melody of the title track. On cue, the audience gasped and surrendered to the power of the chartbuster track as the camera panned across his anguished face, his voice soaring with the lyrics. The cinema hall had turned into a stadium, because the quintessential Hindi film hero had finally done what a section of the audience was craving: embracing and singing the heartache, not pushing it into the background.

Reams have been written about why Saiyaara, a film starring newcomers (Panday and Aneet Padda), exceeded every expectation. While the broader stroke theories include a vacuum of love stories, smart marketing, and great music, those in the industry are also rejoicing to see that the film had songs, which were lip-synced by the characters, that were lapped up by the audience.

Lyricist Irshad Kamil, who wrote the earworm title track that reached the top five of global Spotify, said in an interview that the movie’s success has proved that if the character lip syncs, the songs “will connect more with the audience.”

“But we have moved on from that, looking down upon lip syncing as a curse, not our inherent culture,” laments veteran lyricist Sameer, who has given words to some of the biggest chartbusters in the ’90s and 2000s, from Aashiqui (1990), Saajan (1991), Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998), Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... (2001) and Aashiq Banaya Aapne (2005) among others.

Background Noise

Industry insiders point to the multiplex revolution in the mid-2000s, which changed not only the storytelling but also the way filmmakers engaged with music, slowly relegating it to the background. The new generation of audience and even filmmakers were looking at songs in films (and more so characters singing them) as “unrealistic”.

“I would say those young filmmakers are making ‘realistic’ cinema, and I say that in quotes because I don’t think they’re making what Shyam Benegal or Satyajit Ray had done,” says lyricist-screenwriter Kausar Munir, known for penning lyrics for Anjaana Anjaani (2010), Meri Pyaari Bindu (2017) and the Amazon Prime Video series Jubilee (2023). Munir says filmmakers today are looking for situations or characters that can easily deliver lip-synced songs, without upsetting the audience, which will feel taken out of the narrative if characters start singing the tracks.

“Which is why in films the characters are rockstars, singers, poets, or there’s the club song, the shaadi song. That’s also not realistic, it’s not like you go to a club and start singing a song and that’s real. But this is the mid part they are coming at. Therefore, there’s this surge in Holi songs or party songs but the love songs, the sad, dramatic tracks, have been relegated to the background,” Munir says.

And Munir is right. Popular Hindi films which had lip-synced songs unabashedly embedded in the narrative are Imtiaz Ali’s Amar Singh Chamkila (featuring Diljit Dosanjh as the titular Punjabi singer), Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Rockstar, both headlined by Ranbir Kapoor playing a musician, or even Saiyaara. Munir has herself written songs where the characters are either actors (Jubilee) or musicians (Qala, Secret Superstar, Meri Pyaari Bindu). The limitation is not just in films, but also on OTT, which is a more “content” driven storytelling landscape, its brand built entirely as a meaningful antithesis to the fluff and flamboyance of big screen.

The platforms aided young filmmakers to tell their personal stories, but most still didn’t carry the lip-syncing syntax of films. Smriti Bhoker, who has penned songs for Call Me Bae, Mismatched and the foot-tapping chartbuster “Adayein Teri” from The Royals, says that the younger generation of filmmakers is likely moving away from lip-syncing because it isn’t something they relate to. “If I’m telling my own story about two girls living in Mumbai, my story will have women break into lip-syncing because that’s just who I am as a person. My personality will reflect my art. It’s mostly the freedom to imagine a larger-than-life in cinema that I don’t see younger filmmakers do anymore,” she says.

Keeping it Brief

Sameer insists that one can’t look at the decline in lip-syncing in isolation. One must also factor in the music landscape, which the veteran writer says has nosedived in the last decade. He recalls filmmakers and producers sitting in music sessions because they were deeply passionate about it. They would spend endless hours talking about the craft, jamming, being invested in the minutest detail.

“Nowadays, producers don’t even have time to narrate the story, forget about having a sitting!” he says. “They just have one brief: Give us a super-hit song. How can anything good happen in this scenario? You will not be aware if you are writing for Baaghi 4, Saiyaara or Housefull 5, because there is no brief.” Sameer says this leads to sub-par songs, which will not work even if characters lip-sync to it. “If you just ask me to write a ‘heartbreak’ song, I will send it thinking it will suit Saiyaara but the track will ultimately end up in a Housefull 5. It will naturally not fit.”

Munir says while the situation is largely prevalent, she won’t put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the filmmakers as the business of filmmaking has become complicated. She adds that it is often the label and the producers who are looking to support the economics of the film through music, which is when the pressure comes on to the filmmaker to go for an instant chartbuster. “So, the filmmaker will abandon some of the specificity of the song and the situation to appeal to a wider audience,” says Munir.

In this, any narrative ambition, such as having your characters break into a song-and-dance routine which isn’t a dream sequence, gets axed at the ideation stage itself. The goal is to simply get a movie off the ground, and if it takes a set of chartbuster tracks playing in the background without having to explain why your characters are suddenly lip-syncing it, the job is done.

“Of course, one would want their songs to have great visuals, including that of your characters singing your lyrics,” Bhoker says. “A lot of people heard my songs, and I appreciate the streaming numbers. But if Ananya Panday sang my track wearing a nice red dress, maybe my mom would remember it for a long time as well, you know?”

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