Cross-Language Collaborations That Deserve A Spot on Your Playlist

Music has never needed translation. Across decades, some of the biggest collaborations in Indian music have crossed language, industry, and even country lines without missing a beat. Diljit Dosanjh took his voice into Kannada cinema for “Rebel Song,” Shreya Ghoshal sang Marathi devotion alongside Hariharan, and Gorillaz brought Asha Bhosle into their world for what became her final recording. Here are nine songs proving that the best collaborations don’t ask where you’re from.

1. “Rebel Song” (From “Kantara: A Legend - Chapter 1 - Hindi”) - B. Ajaneesh Loknath, Diljit Dosanjh, JUNO

   

   A Kannada war-cry gets a Punjabi voice at the front of it. Dosanjh’s voice turns Loknath’s battle score into a rally cry, with the track topping charts a full day before the film was released.

   
   

2. “Bora Bora” - AP Dhillon, Ayra Starr

   

   Ludhiana and Lagos meet halfway on a bassline that refuses to pick a side. Dhillon and Starr don’t borrow each other’s sound so much as build a third one from scratch, mid-song.

   
   

3. “Jeev Rangla” - Shreya Ghoshal, Hariharan, Ajay-Atul

   

   Long before crossovers became a trend, Ajay-Atul paired Ghoshal’s classical polish with Hariharan’s ghazal-worn restraint for this Marathi devotional duet from “Jogwa,” and what comes out feels more like a prayer.

   
   

4. “Maan Meri Jaan (Afterlife)” - King, Nick Jonas

   

   King’s original earned heartbreak the hard way. Jonas’s English verse doesn’t chase the Hindi hook so much as sit beside it, proof that a remix can travel without losing what made it work in the first place.

   
   

5. “Sajje Khabbe (Anthem of Nobody)” (From “I, Nobody”) - Jakes Bejoy, Sudhir Yaduvanshi, Bjorn Surrao, Simiran Kaur Dhadli, and Siddhant Kaushal

   

   Jakes Bejoy’s score work has always leaned toward the theatrical. Here, four voices stack in four regional inflections, mirroring the layered mystery the film itself is chasing.

   
   

6. “The Shadowy Light” - Gorillaz, Asha Bhosle, Ajay Prasanna, Amaan Ali Bangash, Ayaan Ali Bangash, Gruff Rhys

   

   Asha Bhosle’s final recorded contribution came not from Bollywood but from Gorillaz’s India-inspired album “The Mountain.” She was hesitant until she heard it; the song’s imagery, pulled from her own trip to Varanasi, became an unintended farewell before her passing this April.

   
   

7. “Arabic Kuthu - Halamithi Habibo” (From “Beast”) - Jonita Gandhi, Anirudh Ravichander

   

   Ravichander’s hook borrows its backbone from Arabic pop, with Gandhi’s Tamil verses over it. The result became one of the most danced to tracks of its year.

   
   

8. “Don’t Look Down” (Remix) - Ed Sheeran, Hanumankind, Dhee, Santhosh Narayanan

   

   Ed Sheeran’s original gets folded into three new registers; Hanumankind, Dhee, and Narayanan each bring a different regional flavour to a track that was never designed to stay in one lane.

   
   

9. “Satrangi Re” - Dawn Cordo, Arijit Singh

   

   Cordo frames Singh's voice somewhere between Bollywood ballad and Western pop, and Singh, who rarely needs help carrying a song, uses the room to go quieter than usual.

Nine songs, nine different starting points, and not one of them treats “collaboration” as a marketing word. Some are debut experiments; others, like “The Shadowy Light," carry the weight of an ending. Together they make the same case: the best music in this country has always been made by people willing to work outside their own language.