Ahead of its release, Shahid Kapoor, Kriti Sanon, and Rashmika Mandanna’s upcoming film Cocktail 2 has been creating a lot of buzz. The makers recently released their latest song “Mashooqa”, however, it went viral for all the wrong reasons. Netizens alleged that the tune of the song was copied from a 1993 Italian track “Se So Arrubate A Nonna.” Some people even took a dig at music composer Pritam and brought back older allegations of plagiarism. Pritam addressed these allegations on social media and expressed his displeasure over them.
Taking to his Instagram handle, he wrote on his Story, “Every single one of my song releases comes with a set of self-appointed music detectives, who have created a new genre called ‘imaginary similarities’. Same people, same ‘inspired by’ thesis.. Boss, at this point, you are my unpaid PR team..I just want to say guys, NOT NICE. (sic)”
Cocktail 2’s song “Mashooqa” has been composed by Pritam, with Amitabh Bhattacharya’s lyrics. It has been voiced by Raghav Chaitanya and Mahmood Ruaa Kayy, with the Italian bits written and performed by Mahmood. The track’s video shows Kriti and Shahid’s characters travelling to different places together and falling in love with each other.
The controversy started when a user on Reddit user recently shared videos from the song with the original 1993 track, pointing out the similarities between the tunes. Soon after, many social media users started claiming that the music was almost identical. “It’s still a dull song even after Pritam copied it,” a person wrote. Another commented, “Bollywood copying again?” A third comment read, “It sounds the same.”
However, several fans took a stand to defend Pritam, highlighting that the song may have been inspired from the OG Italian track. “This is called sampling, not stealing/copying. It’s when you take the main beat of a song and layer other instruments over it with changed lyrics. It’s a very popular concept in the music industry. Pitbull, Taylor Swift, Kanye and many more artists also sample songs,” a Reddit user elaborated.
The original song “Se So Arrubate A Nonna” is a Neapolitan track by Italian duo Bibi and Coco. It was released in 1993 as one of the songs of their album Le Origini Vol. 2. The title actually means “The Kidnapped Grandma” in the Neapolitan dialect.
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