Independent singer-songwriter Hanita Bhambri has made her mainstream film debut with an English-language track for Toxic, the Yash-starrer directed by Geetu Mohandas, working with composer Vishal Mishra. She was brought on to write the English lyrics, and ended up singing the song too.
In an interview with Bollywood Hungama, Bhambri said Mishra liked her voice during the presentation stage and pushed her to record it herself. The song then travelled up the chain: Mishra called the director, put her on speaker, and Bhambri sang it live on the call before Mohandas signed off on her recording the final version.
A small story with a bigger signal
On its own, this is a nice credit for one artist. Read against the wider market, it is a data point in a shift that media and music planners have been tracking for a couple of years: the wall between India’s independent music scene and film soundtracks is thinning.
Bhambri, who released her album Shoharat a year ago and has a catalogue of roughly 40-45 songs built around dark-pop territory – obsession, heartbreak, revenge, complicated relationships – describes the crossover as a natural fit rather than a genre switch. She said the brief asked for something dark, seductive and dangerous while still sounding grand and cinematic, with international appeal.
That last phrase is the commercially interesting part. An English track inside a large Indian theatrical release is not a novelty item any more; it is a positioning decision.
Why an English song is a distribution choice
Film music remains one of the most efficient marketing assets in Indian cinema. A soundtrack works as a trailer that plays on repeat, surfaces in short-video feeds, and keeps a title in recommendation algorithms for weeks before and after release. Language choice inside that soundtrack changes who the algorithm serves it to.
Bhambri makes the creative case herself, arguing that an English song can add a different texture and cultural flavour when the story already has a global or contemporary aesthetic – and that in Toxic it reflects the characters rather than being dropped in. For anyone planning campaigns, the practical implications are worth listing:
- Playlist reach: an English track can be pitched to pop and international playlists that a Hindi or Kannada film song would not naturally enter.
- Creator pickup: English hooks travel further in short-video edits across markets, widening the free promotional layer around a release.
- Artist audience transfer: an indie name brings a pre-built, high-engagement listener base that does not overlap perfectly with the film’s core audience.
- Catalogue value: a song with standalone appeal keeps earning on streaming long after the theatrical window closes.
The talent pipeline argument
Bhambri says she was given complete creative freedom on the writing, and credits both Mishra and Mohandas for the trust involved. She also flags the learning curve of a big-film recording session – how much shifts through tiny choices, from pronunciation to where you breathe to how much attitude a line carries.
Her broader hope is that the fluidity between independent and mainstream music continues, opening doors for writers and singers with distinct voices. For music supervisors and label teams, that is the operational takeaway: the indie catalogue is now a viable talent scouting ground, not just a licensing shelf. An artist with 40-plus original songs has already proven she can write to a mood and hold an audience – which is most of what a soundtrack brief demands.
What to watch next
The metric that will decide whether this becomes a pattern is simple: do these crossover tracks over-index on streaming relative to the rest of the soundtrack, and do they pull listeners from outside the film’s home language market? If yes, expect more composers to build indie collaborators into their pitch decks by default.
Bhambri, for her part, says she wants to keep moving between independent work and film projects, across dark pop, rock or blues, as long as it still sounds like her.
Source: bollywoodHungama.com
