This article is part of IndieWire’s 2000s Week celebration. Click here for a whole lot more. How does one even begin to define the 2000s in Hindi cinema? The decade that started with “Kaho Naa.
.. Pyaar Hai!” and ended with “3 Idiots?” The decade that gave us Bipasha Basu and Rakhi Sawant and took away Madhuri Dixit and Aishwarya Rai? The decade of “Tere Bina” but also of “No Entry?” Cinema contains multitudes, but the aughts in Bollywood were a multiverse, and nowhere is that clearer than in the best musical numbers of the decade.
Curating this list was not easy — just ask the editors who waited patiently for a draft that I was not able to produce because I was busy swapping out “Kal Ho Naa Ho” songs until the last possible second. Some basic guidelines: This is a list of musical numbers, NOT songs — the song obviously matters, but choreography, visualization, and longevity of the actual video mattered a lot more. I didn’t want the list to be too heavy on specific stars or movies, so we’ve limited it to one entry per film (and an overall vibe check on how much is too much Aishwarya or Hrithik).
That meant making judgment calls on dance numbers vs montages, dream sequences vs performances, and basically anything else that might stop myself from including the entirety of “Devdas” and “Om Shanti Om.” Sometimes one song’s inclusion directly impacted another’s, as with the weeklong internal debate I had over “Bole Chudiyan” vs. “Maah.