Links to the Hindi song collections for the periods covered in this section:
1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 1990s (All) 1990s GEMs
Commentary:
After the dismal 1980s (which I termed the “lost decade”), the 1990s marked a significant turnaround in the quality of Hindi film music. A new group of music makers emerged who significantly elevated the caliber of Hindi songs to nearly the level of the Golden Age (though, as mentioned before, matching that level is unlikely to ever happen):
- Abhijeet, Kumar Sanu, S.P. Balasubramanium, Sonu Nigam, Sukhwinder Singh, Udit Narayan
- Alka Yagnik, Anuradha Paudwal, Kavita Krishnamurty, Sadhana Sargam
- A.R. Rahman, Anu Malik, Ismail Darbar, Jatin-Lalit, Nadeem-Shravan, Uttam Singh, Viju Shah (son of Kalyanji)
- Javed Akhtar, Mehboob, Sameer.
This was the decade when the Lata-Asha duopoly finally ended, though the sisters did continue their playback singing during this period for a small number of films. There were also other members of the “old guard” who contributed significantly during this period: Laxmikant Pyarelal, Anand Bakshi, Gulzar and Majrooh Sultanpuri.
Then there was the music maestro R.D. Burman, affectionately known in the industry as ‘Pancham’. Although the quality of his songs had steadily deteriorated since the death of Kishore Kumar in 1987, he composed one of the most masterful scores of his career for the movie 1942: A Love Story (released in 1994). Unfortunately, Pancham did not live to see the tremendous success of the music of his final film, for which he was posthumously awarded the Filmfare award.
With the death of Laxmikant (1998) and Kalyanji (2000), the final decade of the 20th century also brought to a close the careers of the last of the amazing music-director pairs of the Golden Age: Laxmikant-Pyarelel and Kalyanji-Anandji.