Singer Humaira Arshad has a point to make. She feels that although the Pakistan film industry is doing well by churning out movies on a regular basis, the weakest part of all its productions is the music. To be honest, she ain’t wrong. We can’t recall any song, leave aside a complete album, from any of our movie soundtracks that have stood out as something that has caught the people’s attention.

Yes, there have been decent compositions, such as a couple of tracks in Actor-in-Law, but none has had the ‘wow’ factor which means that no one is listening to them over and over. It is hard to find the reasons for it but our music composers can always work hard(er). Or the directors need to understand that in the subcontinent, music plays just as important a part in the success/failure of a film as its storyline.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, November 27th, 2016