Music: Adnan Sami
Lyrics: Sameer
Label: T Series.

This audio has a haunting duet that Adnan Sami gets to sing with the indomitable Lata Mangeshkar. Just why this sparkling jewel in the croon is positioned at the end of the album is beyond me.

But then T Series has always played strange games with the Nightingale (as Lata Mangeshkar is also known). Years ago for an album called "Radha Ka Sangam" they even tried to do the unthinkable. Dub her songs with another voice!

This album's title could refer to the precious ballad featuring Lata Mangeshkar's voice that escapes unscathed. In "Lucky" the opening track "Jaan meri ja rahi sanam" features the music company's old favourite Anuradha Paudwal doing a very ordinary 'pahadi' folk number. Though Udit Narayan gives a controlled climate to the creation the duet seems on the verge of collapse.

In her other duet "Hum deewane" with Sonu Nigam, Anuradha Paudwal tries to coil-uncoil her chords in sensual shapes.

Lucky????? Not quite.

Maybe the soundtrack needed that touch of inspiration that an Asha Bhosle or even Kavita Krishnamurthy provided earlier on? Now when we hear Asha Bhosle being used by Mr Sami to sing something odd and eminently forgettable as "Lucky lips," we cringe in disbelief.

Surely the singing legends need to have their presence justified by the material they 'sing' their teeth into? At most "Lucky lips" (cringe cringe!) is the kind of item number that Asha Bhosle did 20 years ago for R.D. Burman. Of course she still carries it off with erotic élan. But don't her songs need to go further than where she has already gone?

Adnan Sami just doesn't possess the creative energy. He flits from mood to mood in mellow motions that add up to a whole lot of soft but flabby cadences. A pity, considering he has some of our best singers, from the two mighty crooners Asha B and Lata M to the contemporary hot-lips Sonu Nigam and Udit Narayan to fuel his imagination.

Sonu's solo "Sun zara" is rendered bearable by the singer's zest for wringing out undulations even on the straight and narrow path.

But look at the signposts.... they all lead to familiar territory. No dynamics to guide Sami into the composing arena. Just goes to prove singers shouldn't step across the line. Hemant Kumar succeeded in doing so many years ago. But lately Roop Kumar Rathod and Kumar Sanu have been pretty disastrous as composers.

Adnan Sami is saved by some expert singing. And his duet with the mighty Mangeshkar "Shayad yahi to pyar hai" just blows you away.

But by then the album is gone. It's like a campfire being ignited when the picnickers have bolted.