Home > Hindi Songs > Top Songs & Albums > Filmfare awards/nominees for Best Lyrics

This is a complete list of notable Hindi songs which won the Filmfare award for Best Lyrics, as well as the other songs which were nominated for the award. A few points of note:

  • The award given to the best lyricist started in 1959, several years after the first launch of the Filmfare awards. (Note that not every award winner or nominee is listed below, because I did not consider some songs worthy of inclusion.)
  • The award or nomination was generally given to songs from movies released in the year immediately preceding the Filmfare award ceremony. However, there are exceptions to the rule, where the movie may have been released two years earlier (e.g., Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Ha, Do Raaste and Mera Naam Joker). That’s why there are separate columns for the Filmfare award year (Year-F) and the year the movie was released (Year-R).
  • Although the Filmfare awards were generally given on the basis of merit (allowing some leeway for subjectivity), this was not always the case. Two glaring errors:
    • It is truly incredible that Guide, which I consider the best Hindi movie soundtrack ever made, did not even get a nomination for Shailendra’s awe-inspiring lyrics. This may have been partly because for some odd reason it was nominated in 1967, two years after it was released (1965). Even so, it is simply astonishing that Guide was completely ignored in this category.
    • The most egregious example of the wrong song getting the award was Beimaan in 1973. That was the year that songs like ‘Ek pyaar ka nagma hai’ (Shor) and ‘Chingari koi bhadke’ (Amar Prem) were nominated, and both were clearly miles ahead in caliber. This lends credence to the claim made by some that the award could be bought, and at least in this case you won’t get any argument from me. Enough said.

Note that the list below is sortable by each column. (Multiple levels of sorting are possible by sorting more than one column in succession, from lowest to highest.)

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