Few Bollywood soundtracks in recent memory have landed with the emotional force of Saiyaara, and ranking the Saiyaara songs of all time means wading through five composers, seven core tracks, and a genuinely rare run of chart history. The 2025 Yash Raj Films romance, directed by Mohit Suri and led by debutants Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda, didn’t just produce a hit single. It produced an album where almost every track found its own audience, its own mood, and its own moment on the charts. Sorting out the best five from that lineup is not an easy task, because the album rewards repeat listens on completely different terms depending on whether the mood calls for heartbreak, hope, or something in between.
This list leans on what listeners and critics have actually responded to: streaming numbers, vocal performance, arrangement choices, and the kind of staying power that turns a film song into something people return to long after the movie has left theaters. Expect a mix of the title track’s record-breaking run, the quieter reprise versions that reward close listening, and the full-bodied ballads that anchor the middle of the album. For anyone building a proper home listening setup around an album this layered, a browse through the headphone comparison guide on the site is worth a look before diving in, since dynamic range matters a lot on tracks like these.
Saiyaara (Title Track)
There’s a reason the title track became the centerpiece of this entire soundtrack conversation. Composed by Tanishk Bagchi alongside Kashmiri artists Faheem Abdullah and Arslan Nizami, with lyrics by Irshad Kamil, the song turned into the first Bollywood track ever to enter Spotify’s Global Top 50, eventually climbing as high as the No. 5 spot worldwide. That is not a small milestone. It edged past international names like Lady Gaga and Billie Eilish on a global chart that Indian film music had never previously cracked, and it did so almost entirely on the back of domestic Indian streaming numbers crossing into worldwide visibility.
What makes the track work on a purely musical level is the way Abdullah’s vocal restraint plays against the swelling production underneath it. Bagchi has talked openly about composing the song during a genuinely difficult personal stretch, long before there was a script or a deadline attached to it, and that origin shows up in how unforced the melody feels. On headphones, the layering between the acoustic guitar foundation and the string arrangement that builds in the second half rewards close attention; in a car or through a phone speaker, it still lands as a straightforward, aching melody. Few recent Hindi film songs have managed to feel both intimate and stadium-sized at once, and that duality is exactly why this one became a Gen Z romance anthem almost overnight.
Barbaad
Where the title track aches quietly, Barbaad goes for the bigger, more theatrical heartbreak. Composed by The Rish and sung by Jubin Nautiyal, the nearly six-minute runtime gives the song room to build from a stripped-down opening into a full orchestral climax, and Nautiyal’s voice has the kind of grain and reach that this genre of devastated-lover ballad has always needed. It’s the sort of track that Bollywood does better than almost anyone else in mainstream pop right now, leaning fully into melodrama without ever feeling cheap about it.
The arrangement deserves real credit here too. Rather than rushing toward the hook, the production lets tension accumulate, with strings entering gradually until the chorus finally detonates around the three-minute mark. On a strong pair of over-ear headphones, that build is genuinely satisfying, and it’s part of why the song has become a fixture in late-night sad-song playlists across Indian streaming platforms. Nautiyal has built an entire career on this kind of vocal performance, and Barbaad ranks among his more memorable recent outings precisely because the composition gives him space to actually act through the singing rather than just hit notes.
Tum Ho Toh
Vishal Mishra’s contribution to the album takes a gentler route, and it shows why critics singled this one out as a personal favorite from the soundtrack. Sung by Mishra himself alongside Hansika Pareek, Tum Ho Toh leans into a softer, more conversational melody that feels closer to a late-night acoustic session than a big-budget film number. The pairing of voices gives the track a duet warmth that the rest of the album, dominated by solo vocal performances, doesn’t really attempt elsewhere.
Mishra has a track record of writing melodies that prioritize melodic simplicity over vocal showmanship, and that instinct serves the song well. The instrumentation stays relatively sparse through the verses, built around piano and light guitar work, before letting Pareek’s vocal texture add contrast in the higher registers. It’s a song built for quieter listening environments, the kind that rewards a late drive or a pair of decent earbuds rather than a club system. Anyone weighing options for that kind of intimate listening might find the earbuds comparison page useful, since a track this dependent on vocal nuance benefits from gear that handles midrange detail well.
Humsafar
Sachet-Parampara wrote and performed Humsafar together, and the sibling duo’s chemistry is obvious from the first verse. Their voices have always worked well in tandem on romantic material, and this track plays to that strength directly, trading lines back and forth in a way that mirrors the back-and-forth nature of the lyrics themselves. At just over five minutes, the song has enough space to develop a real emotional arc rather than settling for a single mood throughout.
Sachet Tandon’s vocal tone carries a particular warmth that has made him one of the more reliable voices in contemporary Bollywood romance, and pairing it against Parampara’s complementary register gives Humsafar a fuller sound than a solo vocal track could manage. The production keeps things relatively traditional, built around a melodic backbone that nods toward classic Hindi film romance songwriting while still sounding current. It’s a track that holds up particularly well live, where the call-and-response structure between the two vocalists translates naturally to a stage setting.
Dhun
Mithoon composed Dhun, and Arijit Singh’s vocal performance on it is exactly the kind of restrained, emotionally precise work that has made him one of the most consistently reliable voices in Hindi film music for over a decade now. At four and a half minutes, the song doesn’t overstay itself, building toward an emotional peak without padding the runtime unnecessarily.
What stands out about Singh’s delivery here is the control. He has a well-documented tendency to hold back in the verses before opening up fully in the chorus, and Dhun follows that exact pattern, which gives the production room to layer in strings and a fuller mix only once the vocal has earned it. Mithoon’s compositions tend to favor melody over flash, and that approach suits this kind of soundtrack well, since it leaves space for the lyrics, written with the same emotional directness that runs through the rest of the album, to actually land. Critics covering the soundtrack singled out the overall composing team’s work as the emotional backbone of the film, and Dhun is one of the clearest examples of why that praise stuck.
Honorable Mentions Worth Hearing
Two reprise versions round out the broader soundtrack conversation and deserve a mention even outside the main five. Shreya Ghoshal’s reprise of the title track strips the song down to a far more intimate register, trading the original’s slow build for something closer to a lullaby, while Shilpa Rao’s reprise of Barbaad compresses that song’s drama into just over two minutes without losing any of its emotional weight. Both versions show how flexible the original compositions are, since reworking a vocal arrangement this dramatically without losing the melody’s identity is genuinely difficult to pull off. For listeners working through the full songs section of the site, both reprises are worth tracking down alongside the main five tracks above.
Taken as a whole, the Saiyaara soundtrack succeeds because no two songs on it are chasing the same emotional beat. Tanishk Bagchi, Mithoon, Vishal Mishra, Sachet-Parampara, and The Rish each brought a distinct compositional voice to the album, and YRF Music’s decision to let five different teams contribute rather than locking the whole soundtrack to a single composer paid off in variety. Whether the album gets revisited for the title track’s record-breaking streaming run or for the quieter Tum Ho Toh, there’s a genuine case that this is one of the more complete Bollywood soundtracks of the decade so far.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who composed the Saiyaara title track?
The title track was composed by Tanishk Bagchi along with Faheem Abdullah and Arslan Nizami, with lyrics written by Irshad Kamil. Faheem Abdullah also provided the lead vocals on the original version.
Which Saiyaara song performed best on streaming charts?
The title track holds that distinction by a wide margin, becoming the first Bollywood song to enter Spotify’s Global Top 50 chart and climbing as high as No. 5 worldwide during its peak run in mid-2025.
How many songs are on the Saiyaara soundtrack album?
The standard soundtrack album includes seven songs, with an extended edition released later in 2025 adding additional tracks including reprise versions of the title song and Barbaad.
Who sang Barbaad from Saiyaara?
Barbaad was composed by The Rish and sung by Jubin Nautiyal, with a separate shorter reprise version later performed by Shilpa Rao.
Is Tum Ho Toh a solo or duet track?
Tum Ho Toh is a duet, performed by composer Vishal Mishra alongside vocalist Hansika Pareek.
Who sang Dhun from the Saiyaara album?
Dhun was composed by Mithoon and sung by Arijit Singh.