Mahadevan re-sings Daler's song

The music of Shaad Ali's Jhoom Barabar Jhoom is zooming the musical charts and the title track is undoubtedly the biggest hit from the album by now. Shankar Mahadevan's lively rendition of the song makes Amitabh Bachchan go all the more zesty in the film which is quite evident by his sparkling performance in the trailers.

But was Shankar the original choice for the song? Not really! The song was initially crooned by Daler Mehendi. In fact the singer is still unaware that his voice or name does not appear on the audio CDs of the film. Till last week Daler Mehendi was quite excited about the song and even sang a few lines for us until he came to know that his vocals were subsequently replaced by Shankar Mahadevan who also happens to be one of the music directors from the trio of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy who have composed for the film.

Ehsaan confirms saying, "Yes, Daler had sung the song earlier but the song was re-recorded by Shankar Mahadevan later". But why the change? Did they feel that Daler's voice did not fit the song? Well that would be surprising considering that the song has a strong Punjabi flavour which happens to be Daler's domain. So why the singer replacement? Ehsaan clarifies ""Actually Mr Bachchan asked for the change as he did not want to break the series of hit he has got with Shankar as the singer in the form of chartbusters like Kajra Re (Bunty Aur Babli) and Rock and Roll (Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna)."

Now this comes as a bigger surprise to us since a couple of years back Amitabh Bachchan wasn't much happy with the song Kajra Re from Bunty Aur Babli which was again sung by Shankar Mahadevan. Ehsaan admits, "That's true. We met him at a Diwali party some years back when he told us that he wanted an anthem for himself and Abhishek to be onscreen together. But when he heard Kajra Re he wasn't very excited and asked for a few changes. We agreed but Shaad Ali and Aditya Chopra were happy with the song and they convinced Amitabh too. He heard it a few more times and agreed as well". What happened to the track if of course known to all.

Coming back to Daler Mehendi, the singer shared a very nice rapport with Amitabh Bachchan. He recollects, "When in 1997 Mr Bachchan called me and said 'Dalerji I would love to work with you, will you work with me?' I was extremely happy." Daler and Amitabh even shared screen space in the song 'Na Na Na Re' from the film Mrityudaata that year. We wonder what Mr Daler has to say about Bachchan now?