Ae Dil Hai Mushkil Songwriting Credits by Arijit Singh

Hindi film music splits authorship three ways, and this record is a clean example of the split. Pritam Chakraborty composed all six originals and appears on the Discogs sleeve as Music By. Amitabh Bhattacharya wrote every word of them, including the title lyric he drafted in the back seat of a car on the drive from Oshiwara to Khar and later called too predictable for its own rhymes. Arijit Singh wrote none of it. He is a playback singer, and on the title track, "Channa Mereya", "The Breakup Song", "Alizeh" and the two deluxe versions his name sits in the vocal line and nowhere in the writing credits. That did not stop the awards going his way. He took Best Male Playback Singer for the title song at the Filmfare Awards in 2017, on the same night Pritam won Best Music Director and Bhattacharya won Best Lyricist for "Channa Mereya". One wrinkle is worth naming: Discogs and MusicBrainz both credit Arijit Singh as a programmer on four tracks alongside Sunny M.R., which is a studio contribution rather than an authorship one, but more than a singer normally gets. The ninth track breaks the pattern outright. "Aaj Jaane Ki Zid Na Karo" is a Pakistani geet written by Fayyaz Hashmi and composed by Sohail Rana, recreated here for Shilpa Rao, so Pritam sits on it as producer and not as composer. The album also drew a plagiarism charge, with the guitar riff of "Bulleya" traced to Papa Roach's "Last Resort".