‘Akele Hain To Kya Gum Hai’ From Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak Was Originally A Song By This British Rock Group

Nasir Hussain's productions have always had music by R.D. Burman before Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), barring his debut as producer, Phir Wohi Dil Laya Hoon, which had music by O.P.Nayyar, his 2nd production, Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai, which had music by Shankar Jaikishan, and Ni Sultana Re from Pyar Ka Mausam which is co-composed by R.D.Burman and percussionist Homi Mullan.

When young Mansoor Khan was to make his feature film debut, he decided to opt for relatively new composing duo Anand-Milind with whom he had worked for a Doordarshan tele-film starring Amole Gupte, called Umberto. Mansoor Khan also picked the relatively new Udit Narayan as the lead singer for Aamir Khan, and Udit had worked on Umberto too, incidentally.

By now, it is well-known that the soundtrack of Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak is one of the best-selling Bollywood soundtrack albums of the 1980s with more than 8 million soundtrack albums sold and was a breakthrough for the careers of Anand-Milind, Udit Narayan and record label T-Series. The film is filled with hugely successful songs and one of those songs happen to be 'Akele Hain To Kya Gum Hai'.

Listen and hold on to the song.

10 years before Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, an English instrumental rock group called The Shadows released their eleventh album, called Tasty (1977). The group is the fourth most successful act in the UK singles chart, behind Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and Cliff Richard. The album had a song called 'Return to the Alamo'.

This is that song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xR_vfH9wUw

And that, in my opinion, is one of the MOST heart-breaking discoveries of plagiarism in Indian film music. It is so blatant and bizarre that every time I tell people this, and play both songs back to back, their first reaction is, 'C'mon, that's someone playing the instrumental version of the Hindi song on stage somewhere!'.