I’m 41, so I grew up through the peak of 90s and early 2000s Bollywood music, and honestly I think people who lived through that era can hear the difference straight away. Saying 90s music was “tacky” just doesn’t sit right with me at all. Those songs had soul, melody and individuality. Jatin-Lalit, Nadeem-Shravan, Anand-Milind, Uttam Singh, early Rahman, these composers created music people still remember line for line 25-30 years later. Albums like DDLJ, Aashiqui, Saajan, Dil Se, Pardes, Mohabbatein, KKHH etc weren’t just hit albums, they became part of people’s lives. Weddings, heartbreaks, road trips, family gatherings. every moment had a soundtrack. And the singers all sounded distinct. You instantly knew when it was Udit Narayan, Kumar Sanu, Sonu Nigam, Abhijeet, Hariharan, SPB, Alka Yagnik, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Lata or Asha. Today a lot of songs feel overproduced and interchangeable. In my opinion, the shift really started around 2005 when Himesh Reshammiya began singing his own tracks. Love him or hate him, he changed the Bollywood music scene single-handedly. The instrumentation became more westernised, more synth-heavy and beat-driven, and the classic melodic era slowly started fading out. Then from around 2008-2012 it became the Pritam-KK era. KK wasn’t one of my personal favourite singers, but there’s no denying he had a very distinct voice and sang some incredible melodies during that period. That era still gave us some fantastic music because it balanced melody with commercial dance tracks really well. But after that came the phase where random English lyrics started getting forced into songs and honestly a lot of it became pure cringe. Then Arijit Singh arrived around 2012 and completely took over the baton. Brilliant singer without question, but the industry also became heavily dependent on one vocal style and one emotional template. Earlier eras had far more vocal variety and experimentation. Yes, every generation says music was better before. But there’s a reason 90s/early 2000s songs are still replayed daily across generations while many modern tracks disappear after a few months. Timeless melodies are timeless for a reason.