We live in weird times. Music Channels these days don't play music anymore. You get to watch everything else on this channel, except the chance to listen and watch some good music.

So there I was surfing channels on a late Friday night and sneezing away to glory. I suddenly landed up on this channel called E 24. And at the very moment, they started to play this song, jab koi baat bigad jaaye, jab koi mushkil pad jaaye, tum dena saath mera o humnava.

This song from Mahesh Bhatt's Jurm (which was a rather bad copy of the super hit movie Fatal Attraction, and starred Vinod Khanna, Meenakshi Sheshadri and Sangeeta Bijlani. The posters of the movie had the current Mrs Azharuddin in a towel with a knife hanging over her) was the song that made Kumar Sanu famous. (Sanu's first song was "main jaadugar mera naam goga" for the movie Jaadugar). Sanu landed in Mumbai right around the time Kishore Kumar expired and sung his way to glory.

But that is not the subject of this blog.

The subject of this blog is how at times copied songs turn out to be as good or even better than the originals. The soulful "jab koi baat bigad jaaye" was written by Indeevar (I still wonder how did he get around to writing, what is one of my all time favourite Jeetendra-Sridevi numbers "icecream khaogi, aha...picture dekhne jaogi, aha" for this movie called Justice Chowdhary).

"Jab koi baat..." is a copy of "100 miles away from home" sung by Peter, Paul and Mary. Even though I love listening to the original, it's the copied "jab koi baat bigad jaaye" composed by Rajesh Roshan that really makes me happy and I can listen to it over and over again.

And there are many such "copied" Hindi songs which are an absolute treat to listen to. So here is a list of such songs, which I absolutely love to listen to.

Ae dil hai mushkil jeena yahan, zarra hutke, zarra bachke, ye hai bambai meri jaan:This lovely number from the Guru Dutt produced and Raj Khosla directed CID, was sung by Mohammed Rafi, picturised on Johnny Walker and written by the most versatile Hindi film lyricist ever Majrooh Sultanpuri. The song was put to tune by O P Nayyar. The tune is a copy of the background music of John Ford's 1946 western "My Darling Clementine". The tune keeps repeating throughout the movie, but is loud and audible only after the movie ends, and the credits start to role. Majrooh's impeccable lyrics describing the then Bombay(I wouldn't say much has changed) and Johnny Walker's antics really make the song standout.

O mere sapno ke saudagar mujhe aisi jagah le ja...

This is my favourite Anuradha Paudwal song, written by Samir and put to tune by Nadeem Shravan. It takes a listener sometime to realise that the song is a copy of Sir Cliff Richards "Bachelor Boy". The irony is that the song was a part of a movie called Dil Hai Ki Maanta Nahi, which is a scene by scene by lift from Frank Capra's 1934 classic, It Happened One Night. In fact if you sit and compare, the dialogue writer Sharad Joshi (probably the greatest Hindi essayist of his generation) has just translated the dialogues same to same from the original. There is not one bit of originality in the movie, but I guess that was the idea anyway.

Tumse milke aisa laga tumse milke...

The song was set to tune by R D Burman and written by one Khursheed Hallauri, who probably wrote for just this one film "Parinda" and never wrote again. The tune has been copied from this song called "when I need love you are just a phone call away" sung by George Benson. What makes this song standout are the lyrics of the song, the way it's been picturised, and Madhuri Dixit, without her makeup.

Tu cheez badi hai mast mast...

When the song was released for a while everybody gave credit to Viju Shah, for coming up with such an original peppy number. Then of course people woke up to the fact that the song has been copied from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's Dam Mast Qalandar Mast Mast. What made the song click was of course the ravishing Raveena Tandon, looking her best. These were the days when she had just moved from "main expose nahi karungi" to "agar script ki demand hai to expose karne main kya harj hai." That really made the song click, and you could always trust Anand Bakshi to come up with a superhit number. And how can we forget Udit Narayan. And of course, it also had Akshay Kumar, who now probably holds the record for having the maximum number of flops over the last few years.

Chura Liya Hai Tumne Jo Dil Ko

This song, which is probably one of RD Burman's biggest hits, was rehashed from the theme of the movie 'If it's Tuesday this must be Belgium'. Of course, impeccable lyrics by Majrooh and the sexy Zeenat Aman, really made it work. The song had a new lease of life when Bally Sagoo decided to remix it.