Rock On 2 (soundtrack)

Did You Know?

• The album was launched at a live concert performance by the film's fictional band Magik at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Indoor Stadium in Mumbai on 23 September 2016.
• A promotional music video titled "Rock On Revisited", featuring Akhtar and Kapoor performing the title track from the first film, was released on 21 October.

Development

The music was integral to the film's story, with the trio composing tunes alongside scriptwriter Pubali Chaudhari. They avoided composing chartbuster numbers to keep the music narrative-driven and did not reuse songs from the first film, except for the title track "Rock On!!" which was retained as the theme. Kit Shangpliang and Pynsuklin Syiemiong from Summersalt contributed to "Hoi Kiw". Farhan Akhtar and Shraddha Kapoor sang most songs; Kapoor auditioned for the trio despite prior playback singing experience. For "Udja Re", Mahadevan sang in a folk style that was filtered and looped.

Concert tours

A three-day US concert tour was planned for 14–16 October, with the band Magik scheduled to perform at venues including the Sun National Bank Center in New Jersey and Oracle Arena in Oakland, California. The producers cancelled the tour, believing the franchise was not seen as a conventional Hindi masala film and had few takers for Indian rock music. Wizcraft, the event organisers, supported the cancellation. Instead, a nationwide tour was planned for Bangalore, Aurangabad, Hyderabad and New Delhi on 2, 6 and 8 November. The Delhi event was moved from Kirori Mal College to Ramjas College after the staff council denied permission.

Reception

Rinky Kumar of The Times of India gave the album three out of five stars, stating it "leaves much to be desired and is not a patch on the soundtrack of the prequel". Devesh Sharma of Filmfare called it "a nice hummable album that stays away from the usual Bollywood beat". Karthik Srinivasan of Milliblog wrote, "Despite Farhan'ish vocal shortcomings, the trio keeps Rock On 2 rocking." Devarsi Ghosh of India Today complimented Kapoor's singing, saying she could hold her own without auto-tune, but criticised Akhtar's vocals, noting the sequel's songs with him "sounds like B-sides to the first film's album".

Michael Mukherjee of Scroll.in was also critical of Akhtar's singing, adding that the score "would have been better served by a more accomplished singer". Rohit Mehrotra of The Quint wrote "there is nothing memorable in the album and it just plods along with ordinary lyrics and the underwhelming singing by Farhan destroying some really interesting tunes". Swetha Ramakrishnan of Firstpost stated the album is "majorly split between two voices: Shraddha Kapoor and Farhan Akhtar, and the latter fails very badly at evoking any emotion".

Sankhayan Ghosh of Mint wrote that the album's use of rock music is "fairly cosmetic and afraid to do anything new". The soundtrack's commercially underwhelming response was attributed to mixed critical reception, the popularity of the Ae Dil Hai Mushkil soundtrack, and the lack of chartbuster numbers. Despite expectations that the songs would gain popularity post-release, they did not after the film's box-office disaster.