Enough pointing fingers at Indian music composers for lifting songs from their overseas contemporaries, enough playing the blame game. If you want to play it, play it fair and square. The other side has committed its sins of plagiarism too. This list tells you 5 Hollywood films that played Bollywood Songs. Yes, songs from Hindi films that were used in commercially successful Hollywood films. But as much as we’d like to avoid it, musicians on our side were given credit for their scores as Star World’s’s advertising would like to call it – a proud moment for India.
Chaiyya Chaiyya – Inside Man
When a song gets used in a Denzel Washington-Jodie Foster-Willian Dafoe Hollywood flick, it grazes the sky. That’s what happened to AR Rahman’s’s track Chaiyya Chaiyya from Dil Se, which was used as opening credits for the film Inside Man.
Wada Na Tod – Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
With Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet playing pole opposites in the film Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind, and Lata Mangeshkar’s’s quivery voice playing in the backdrop for one of the scenes make for a kitschy layering of East meets West.
Chamma Chamma – Moulin Rouge
Urmila Matondkar, in her folksy outfit, resorted to doing thumkas in the song Chamma Chamma from the film China Gate. Who would have imagined that he song would raise a curiosity in Baz Luhrmann to talk to his producers like, “Dude, I’m making a movie where a British poet falls in love with a terminally-ill cabaret actress”. For songs, I’m thinking Tera Rang Balle Balle from Soldier, Chamma Chamma from China Gate and Makhna from Bade Miyan Chote Miya. Tujhe Kya Lagta hai?”. Whatever be his thoughts, the song turned out to be a cracker of a remix.
Tere Bin Nahi Lagda Dholna – Bend it Like Beckham
It’s as though Nusrat Fateh Ali’s’s song Tere Bin Nahi Lagda Dholna was crafted for the Gurinder Chaddha film Bend it Like Beckham. The film was about a Punjabi girl in a typical Indian household wanting to play football when instead she was expected to align herself with the daily chores of the house.
Jaan Pehchaan Ho – Ghost World
Known as one of the first rock and roll songs in Bollywood, Jaan Pehchaan Ho from the film 1965 film Gumnaam, was used in the Hollywood film Ghost World’s’ opening credits sequence. The film starred Scarlett Johansson, Thora Birch and Brad Renfro and was a high school comedy-drama.
