Songs that are actually about the drink

The distinction sounds pedantic until you hear the difference in a room. A party song makes people dance. A daru song makes people point at the speaker. Somebody raises a glass at the exact line, somebody else finishes the couplet, and for about four seconds the whole table is doing the same thing. You cannot get that from a song about a girl at a wedding, however good the drop is.

Chhote Chhote Peg is the modern anchor and it has better lineage than its reputation suggests. It is a rebuild of Dil Tote Tote Ho Gaya, sung by Hans Raj Hans for Bichhoo in 2000, and the voice singing alongside Honey Singh and Neha Kakkar on the 2018 version is Navraj Hans - Hans Raj Hans's son, singing his father's record. Ganpat is the other one nobody skips: Anand Raj Anand's composition, Mika Singh's voice, three words of hook, and a chal daru la that has been shouted in every bar in Bombay for nearly twenty years.

Punjab supplies the bulk of the rest, because Punjabi music has been unembarrassed about this subject for far longer than Hindi cinema was. Daru Badnaam went up quietly and then became inescapable, on the strength of one of the most quotable choruses in the language. Patiala Peg names a measure. Chaar Botal Vodka names a quantity. Angreji Beat is about the drink and the dance floor in the same breath. None of these are subtle and none of them are trying to be.

Underneath the new lot sits the older canon, which is where this genre came from and where it is still best: Thodi Si Jo Pee Li Hai, the whole Sharaabi soundtrack, Mujhe Duniya Walon Sharabi Na Samjho. Those are on the sharabi songs page in full, and the long version of how Hindi cinema arrived at all this is on the bollywood drinking songs page. This one is the set you put on when the first quarter is already open and nobody wants to be at a laptop.