Music composer Pritam walks out of Raabta, producers call it an 'amicable decision'

Music composer Pritam Chakraborty has walked out of the Sushant Singh-Kriti Sanon starrer Raabta. The composer decided on the move after the producer expressed the desire to include an 'outside song' in the album.

Pritam, who has already won rave reviews for the remixed version of 'Raabta' from Agent Vinod (2012), put up a post on his personal Facebook page explaining his decision. Incidentally, the original composition of the track from Agent Vinod is also credited to Pritam.

In the post, Pritam wrote that he had 'decided a while back to only do solo composer albums and not have an 'outside song' in soundtrack's composed by him. He also added 'in Raabta, the producers want to recreate an existing song from the music label as part of the promotions so I have decided to not continue with the film and requested the producers to take out my name from the film credits and promotions...'

However, the composer does not intend to leave the album incomplete. The post mentioned that the 'album will be completed by my company Jam 8.'

Incidentally, Pritam is reported to have a contract that explicitly refrains him from working on recreations. However, Dinesh Vijan's film has already used the remixed version of Raabta as the title track, pictured on Deepika Padukone. 

A report by the daily, Indian Express, quoted producer Bhushan Kumar as saying, "Pritam has tweeted after discussing with me and Dinesh Vijan, so it has not come to us as a surprise. He has not walked out really, there is a difference between walking out, leaving the album, and not continuing to work together. It is an amicable decision between Pritam and us. Pritam as a composer does not want any other or old song to be recreated, it is his policy." 

However, Bhushan also added, "These days as you know, old songs are recreated and its working big time, and we wanted to do something like that. So Pritam wasn’t ready to do that, and he told us that it wouldn’t be good at his part to do this. So it was then decided that his company Jam 8 will work on the album, and as a policy his name will not be associated with an album that has a recreated song."

Read more: Why Hindi cinema needs to stop its obsession with remixing classics

Pritam is undoubtedly one of the top composers in the industry with a slew of hits like Cocktail (2012), Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani (2013), Bajrangi Bhaijaan (2015), Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016) and Dangal (2016) to his name. The composer also has several projects like Salman Khan starrer Tubelight, Anurag Basu's Jagga Jasoos, and Imtiaz Ali's The Ring on his plate. The composer had announced the launch of his Jam 8 project in April last year, with Kaushik-Akash being named as the first artists of his production.

Raabta is scheduled for a theatrical release on 9 June.