'Pehli Nazar Mein’ – Atif Aslam's hit song, a Korean rip off

Netizens draw comparisons between 2008 songs

We have often come across stories about composers and music directors receiving flak for copying western and Asian tunes without crediting the original artist. Bollywood musicians have also been caught plagiarising from time to time. And so, it comes as no surprise that social media users have once again found similarities between Atif Aslam’s Pehli Nazar Mein from the Indian cinema film, Race and the Korean song Sarang Hae Yo by Kim Hyung Sup.

Although the Saif Ali Khan, Bipasha Basu and Akshaye Khanna starrer released back in 2008, it made its way back to people’s quarantine playlists in 2020, following the coronavirus outbreak. Several Twitter users took to the micro-blogging site and expressed their disappointment in Pehli Nazar Mein being a rip off of the Korean hit. “Pehli Nazar Mein was a copy of a wonderful Korean song. My life has been a lie,” wrote a user, adding, “Why are the good bops a copy, Bollywood? I’m sad.”

Furthermore, another user had sparked a social media debate over Be Intehaan being better than Pehli Nazar, tweeting, “Both are good but the fact that Pehli Nazar is a copy of some Korean song, it loses one point, so Be Intehaan it is.”

To this date, some feel that the only similarity between Pehli Nazar Mein and Sarang Hae Yo is the beat, arguing that Aslam gave the classic hit its true identity, more than a decade ago. The Korean number was a part of the hit 2005 drama Sassy Girl Chun-hyang, also known as Delightful Girl. Not only this but Zalima, a song from Shahrukh Khan and Mahira Khan’s film Raees also became part of the heated debate based on plagiarised songs. Highly disappointed, fans claimed that the track is a blatant copy of South Korean Taeyang’s acoustic song, Eyes, Nose, Lips.