On a very short list of images that define the 1990s is Milind Soman emerging from a crate. The track is echt-1990s-three old Hindi film numbers “remixed' with an awkward rap on top-as is the video, with its backup dancers and a mean-looking guy taking off his shirt. Q Funk crowded more pop stars into a single video than ever before: husky-voiced Shweta Shetty, siblings Shaan and Sagarika, Babul Supriyo, now a Union minister of state, and Style Bhai, the poor man’s Baba Sehgal. It worked so well that when MTV returned, in 1996, it adopted the same hybrid approach. This cool-but-relatable style would become the decade’s defining youth aesthetic. There was grunge and hip hop but also Indipop and film-based shows, multilingual VJs, promos featuring specific regional caricatures like Udham Singh and Quick Gun Murugan. This new channel was along the lines of MTV, with one crucial difference: It felt like a cool take on India, not an import. When its contract with Star TV ended in 1994, it exited briefly, and Channel debuted. It’s not a particularly subtle track (Everybody wants to oomph/without the fear of AIDS, the chorus goes), which makes Remo’s brassiness all the more laudable: Hardly anyone was singing openly about AIDS and safe sex in India in the early 1990s.ĭuring its first stint in India, starting 1991, MTV didn’t “Indianize' its content. Having already addressed the drug menace (Pack That Smack) and political apathy (Mr Minister, Politicians Don’t Know How To Rock And Roll), Fernandes recorded what was, in all likelihood, India’s first AIDS anthem: Everybody Wants To. An exception was Remo Fernandes, the Goan singer who was, from the start, bringing up burning issues in his albums.

Unlike the more politically minded Indi-rock scene, Indipop was more concerned with easy listening than deep thinking. Add to this the song’s refrain of “mujhe chhoona nahi, paree hoon main (don’t touch me, I’m a fairy)' and you have a much more sobering context than the fetching melody and Rao’s nimble vocals would suggest.

The video showed a schoolgirl and her teacher. The video was striking too, shot largely in black and white, the images artistically blurred at times.

In 1991, singer Suneeta Rao had a hit with Paree Hoon Main, an ethereal-sounding dandiya-inflected track from her album Dhuan.

Hindi 1990 hits