Spotify Celebrates 25 Years of Lagaan with Behind The Beats Live Recording

Mumbai: Spotify celebrated 25 years of the iconic film ‘Lagaan’ with the first-ever live recording of Behind The Beats. A Spotify video series, Behind The Beats, celebrates iconic Indian cinematic milestones through conversations with the creators of some of the country’s most beloved soundtracks. This event brought together a select group of Spotify Premium fans for an evening with the film’s producer and lead actor Aamir Khan, composer A.R. Rahman, lyricist Javed Akhtar, and writer and director Ashutosh Gowariker, and was hosted by Meiyang Chang.

From the making of the film, and its subsequent Academy Award nomination, to the creation of a soundtrack that became part of India’s cultural fabric, the artists shared previously unheard stories from one of Hindi cinema’s most enduring chapters.

Twenty-five years on, the Lagaan soundtrack endures on playlists and in memory - and the stories behind these songs are as compelling as the songs themselves. What emerged through the conversations was the story of an album shaped by instinct, experimentation, and a willingness to challenge convention.

Among the most streamed songs on the album today, Javed Akhtar revealed that “Mitwa” almost didn’t have the title that would go on to eventually define it. The hook came in toward the end of the creative process, and ended up becoming the track’s defining moment. That same instinct also shaped “Radha Kaise Na Jale”, which today is the most-streamed song on the soundtrack.

The nostalgia continued with “O Rey Chhori”, which carried an unexpected family credit: its English portions were written by a young Zoya and Farhan Akhtar. And for “Ghanan Ghanan”, Ashutosh Gowariker recalled searching for a sound that could capture the looming arrival of rain, until Rahman created the now-famous thunder effect by layering Shankar Mahadevan’s vocals into the soundtrack’s dramatic crescendo.