Bappi Lahiri composed the music for ad taking a gentle dig at him, reveals founder: ‘He took it in the right spirit’
Late music composer Bappi Lahiri, who appeared in one of the most popular ads for CRED, was quite a sport when it came to taking a joke on himself. The ad series had the celebrities laughing at themselves and while Bappi da was aware of this, he was quite invested in it. On a recent podcast, CRED founder Kunal Shah shared the story of the ad featuring Bappi Lahiri and shared that the famed music composer decided to compose for the ad after listening to the pitch.
He told Anupama Chopra on All About Movies, “I was told that Bappi da was absolutely amazing on the set.” He continued, “Although we were making a joke, I still remember that they were singing and giving the jingle and Bappi da was like, ‘Let it be, I’ll make it myself.’ The lyrics were given and he made tune himself.” Kunal said he found it “fascinating” because “it was a laughing at themselves kind of thing but he said ‘No, this is my art, I’m going to do this myself’.”
He added that Bappi da took the tone of the ad in the “right spirit”. He said, “He took it in the right spirit, insanely successful because if you see the long form of the ad, it ends where he is still singing and the lights go off but he’s on, and that’s what Bappi da is. He is just this amazing guy.”
Kunal shared that a big reason as to why these ads worked were because Bollywood was laughing at themselves, and that was something they were not known for. Other ads in the series featured Govinda, Anil Kapoor, Jackie Shroff, Kumar Sanu, Madhuri Dixit, Karisma Kapoor among a few others.
Kunal also shared that some Bollywood celebrities started charging more money because they saw success with these ads. He recalled, “I was told that after doing some of these ads, they could actually charge a lot more because it just changed their perception. We started getting inbound scripts from celebrities that we want to feature in your ad, this is the script and you are like…”
Bappi Lahiri passed away February 2022.
