At the Royal Opera House launch of Yeh Prem Mol Liya's title track, the director traded box office talk for stories about how film music actually used to get made.
The title song launch of Yeh Prem Mol Liya, held at Mumbai's Royal Opera House, turned into something closer to a masterclass than a promotional stop. Sooraj Barjatya, Himesh Reshammiya, Ayushmann Khurrana, Sharvari and producer Mahaveer Jain showed up for the do, and Barjatya spent a good chunk of it walking the room through how songs used to get made before anyone was thinking about reels.
His point was simple: choreography came first, music followed. He brought up Hum Aapke Hain Koun, the 1994 film that still gets quoted at every big fat Indian wedding, and said the joota chori sequence was blocked out before Raam-Laxman wrote a note for it. Same with the gulel shot in 'Didi Tera Deewana'. The steps existed. The tune arrived after.
Songs that took days, not hours
Barjatya's bigger nostalgia trip was about time itself. He talked about songs built across three antaras, shoots that stretched over several days, and the very real problem of figuring out where a song sequence should even begin. He reached for a Guru Dutt anecdote to make the point, recalling that Dutt reportedly waited two days at Bombay's NSCI Club just to get the exact opening shot he wanted for 'Thandi Hawa Kali Ghata', the song featuring Madhubala. Two days for one shot. Try explaining that patience to a set today.
Then came the line that's doing the rounds since the launch. Barjatya said he, Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar are the last set of directors who actually witnessed a hundred musicians playing together at Bombay Lab, the city's old recording hub. He described the ritual around it too, the rehearsals before the actual take, and a memory of Lata Mangeshkar touching musicians' feet before recording. "Woh ek joy hota tha," he said, and turned to Reshammiya with a half-promise: "Ek aisi film banayenge, Himesh ji!"
Whether that film happens is anyone's guess. For now, the one they've actually made is Yeh Prem Mol Liya, and the title track launch was clearly built to lean on exactly this kind of old-world charm, the sort of thing Barjatya's films have traded on since Maine Pyar Kiya. Whether audiences want three-antara love songs in 2026 is the real test.
Yeh Prem Mol Liya opens in cinemas on November 27, with Reshammiya's music expected to be one of its bigger selling points going by how the launch event was staged. Whether the soundtrack lands the way the room at Royal Opera House suggested it might is something we'll only know once the film is actually out and the numbers start coming in.
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