Take two: Rabbi Shergill returns with Avengi Ja Naahin

SOUL SESSION: Rabbi Shergill says the new album, Avengi Ja Naahin, is a collection of random, abstinent songs.

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Mumbai: After a successful debut album and the chartbuster Bulla ki Jaana, singer and music composer Rabbi Shergill returns to explore new vistas with his second album Avengi Ja Naahin.

And though this new soundtrack comes three years after the first one, Rabbi insists that there is no single unifying theme to it.

"It’s a collection of random, insistent, abstinent songs that won't leave me and that will stand in front of me and insist that I write them," Rabbi explains. "It is a collection of songs — some for the album and some off the album. They are just songs that randomly happened. The only unifying theme is their randomness.”

As with the first album, the music and lyrics of Avengi Ja Naahin are entirely by Rabbi, but this time around he experiments with an array of themes, like the downside of love and social activism. Interestingly, his love song isn't an ode to a woman, but to the one of Mumbai's popular suburbs — Bandra.

“Inspiration is an airline pilot. I'm using it as a metaphor. Just going from one place to another, not knowing what to do,” he says.

But would the success and popularity of his debut album be tough to live up to?

"I don't want to define myself by other people's expectations. What’s really important for me as a songwriter is to write an honest song. My litmus test is that I should like it six months later. I'm not chasing excellence. I'm just chasing the movement,” Rabbi muses.

Though the singer has shifted loyalties from Phat Phish records, which launched him to Yash Raj's YRF music, fans will be hoping that his music remains just as soulful.