2 States

The soundtrack to the 2014 Bollywood film 2 States was composed by the celebrated trio Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy (Shankar Mahadevan, Ehsaan Noorani, and Loy Mendonsa), with lyrics by Amitabh Bhattacharya. Released on 15 March 2014 through T-Series, the seven-track album accompanies a film directed by Abhishek Varman and produced by Dharma Productions, starring Arjun Kapoor and Alia Bhatt.^[1]

The film itself is based on Chetan Bhagat's 2009 semi-autobiographical novel about an intercultural romance between a Punjabi man and a Tamil Brahmin woman, a love story complicated by family opposition and the deep cultural differences between North and South India.^[2] Director Varman specifically sought out Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy to create an album with what he described as "soul and young energy" -- a brief that the trio fulfilled by blending contemporary Bollywood pop with folk idioms and a thread of Sufi-inflected romanticism.

Critical response to the album was warm. Bollywood Hungama praised the combination of Amitabh Bhattacharya's imagery-laden lyrics and the composers' ability to balance commercial appeal with genuine melodic craft.^[3] The album earned Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy the Filmfare Award for Best Music Director at the 60th Filmfare Awards.^[2]

The standout track, "Mast Magan," sung by Arijit Singh and Chinmayi Sripada, became a commercial phenomenon and one of the defining romantic songs of 2014, ranking among the most-streamed Bollywood tracks of that year.^[4]