Two people, one table

Ishq is not romance in the greeting-card sense. Romance is a couple. Ishq is longing, which is why it can survive without the other person in the room at all, and why this playlist overlaps at the edges with gham more than it does with anything cheerful. The rule for what gets in: it should be possible to keep talking over it, and it should be better if you do not.

The golden-era block is where the restraint lives. Lag Ja Gale is Madan Mohan's tune and Raja Mehdi Ali Khan's words, set in raga Pahari, sung by Lata Mangeshkar for Woh Kaun Thi in 1964 and picturised on Sadhana - a song from a suspense film that has outlived its plot by sixty years. Abhi Na Jao Chhod Kar, Aap Ki Nazron Ne Samjha, Tere Bina Zindagi Se: all of them are arguments made quietly by people who are not going to say the thing directly.

The 90s did the opposite and said it very loudly, and one of them is still the best-built song of the decade. Pehla Nasha is Jatin-Lalit's melody with Majrooh Sultanpuri's words, and it was among the earliest Hindi film songs shot entirely in slow motion. It also gave Farah Khan her break as a choreographer, because Saroj Khan did not turn up to the set that day and the director asked the assistant standing there to do it.

Then Arijit Singh arrives and quietly takes over half of this room. Tum Hi Ho, Raabta, Hawayein, Kesariya, Apna Bana Le - one voice carrying a decade and a half of pyar bhare gane the way Kumar Sanu carried the 90s. It is a fair complaint that they blur together at 2am. Enough of them are genuinely good that we did not thin them out. Nothing here is a breakup song, which is deliberate; that lot is on gham and on the breakup page, and the two rooms are next door to each other for a reason.