There are film albums, and then there is Rockstar. Not a soundtrack. Not a compilation. Not a playlist for your morning commute. Rockstar is an autopsy. A diary. A scrapbook of emotional crime scenes. Every song is a chapter of Jordan’s disintegration, stitched together with A.R. Rahman’s genius and Mohit Chauhan’s voice that permanently sounds like it’s been dragged across gravel and heartbreak. This isn’t an album; it’s a psychological map of how a small-town boy becomes an icon, a disaster, a legend, and a ghost all at once.
Jordan doesn’t become a rockstar because he chases fame. He becomes a rockstar because his heart malfunctions so violently that music becomes the only language he can still speak. The album reflects that cycle. The opening tracks are breezy, naive, almost annoyingly optimistic, like the emotional equivalent of a freshly washed kurta drying in breezy air. But as the music progresses, the sound darkens, distorts, deepens, and then collapses into a poetic implosion. It mirrors Jordan’s descent from innocence into obsession, from hunger into heartbreak, from rebellion into ruin.
And the genius of the soundtrack is its architecture. Every song feeds the next. Every melody becomes a wound. Every lyric becomes prophecy. By the time we reach “Nadaan Parinde” and “Tum Ho”, Jordan is unrecognisable from the boy who once believed dreams were feathers waiting to lift him. This is the tragedy: the music reveals what he cannot admit. That everything he gains costs him everything he loses.
So here we go. This is the complete dissection. Fourteen tracks, fourteen emotional catastrophes, fourteen versions of Jordan dying and being reborn.
And we’re going to analyse every beat, every breath, every breakdown.
Phir Se Ud Chala: the beginning of the becoming.
“Phir Se Ud Chala” is the soundtrack of a boy who thinks dreams are wings. It’s airy, it’s floaty, it’s charming, and it’s a complete lie. The opening hum feels like standing at the edge of your life and convincing yourself the fall will feel like flying. Mohit Chauhan’s voice is feather-light, almost fragile, like the song itself wants to warn Jordan, “You’re not ready for what you’re asking for.”
But Jordan doesn’t know that. He thinks freedom is a vibe. He thinks heartbreak is an aesthetic. He thinks becoming an artist is about running away instead of being torn apart. The music reflects that innocence: it’s breezy, dreamlike, drifting in slow spirals like a kite in the sky. There is no heaviness yet. No madness. No obsession. Just yearning. Pure, uncut yearning.
The tragedy is that the song’s beauty is built on delusion. Jordan imagines the world waiting for him, the universe conspiring for him, life softening itself for him. He does not understand that desire is a dangerous animal and that the moment you chase it, it bites.
This track captures the final moment before Jordan’s emotional life collapses. The last breath before heartbreak. The last glimpse of sunlight before the sky breaks. “Phir Se Ud Chala” is the lullaby before the nightmare begins. It is innocent, painfully so. And that innocence becomes the very thing the world uses to destroy him.
This is Jordan untouched by pain.
The Jordan who still believes in flight.
Jo Bhi Main: the confession he doesn’t understand yet.
“Jo Bhi Main” is Jordan’s first emotional glitch. It’s the moment he realises that something inside him is too loud to fit into ordinary life. But he doesn’t know what it is yet. He just knows he’s overflowing. The song opens with hesitance, like Jordan is trying to swallow words that refuse to die quietly. Mohit Chauhan sings with a scratchiness that feels like truth scraping its way up Jordan’s throat.
“Jo bhi main kehna chahoon, barbaad kare alfaaz mere.”
This line is Jordan’s entire character arc in one sentence. He feels more than he can articulate. His words betray him. His emotions drown him. He is desperate to express, but the language he knows is too small for the emotion he carries. All he can say is, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah”, on repeat.
The instrumentation captures this internal pressure. It’s steady, rhythmic, almost meditative. But there’s a pulse beneath it, a restlessness, a manic edge hiding under calm production. The crowd chanting behind him is significant, they hear him. They adore him. But they don’t understand him. Jordan is already trapped between performance and identity.
“Jo Bhi Main” marks the first crack in his psyche: the point where he becomes aware that he is fragmented. That the boy he is and the artist he is becoming are not matching up. There is friction. There is confusion. There is longing for clarity he will never receive.
This is the moment Jordan recognises the storm inside him, but still believes he can control it.
Spoiler: he can’t.
This track is the confession of a man who hasn’t realised he’s drowning yet.
Katiya Karun: the illusion of simplicity before life ruins him.
“Katiya Karun” is the last warm memory Jordan will ever have. The song is sunny, playful, mischievous. Harshdeep Kaur’s vocals float like laughter caught in the wind. This is the sound of Heer’s world: a world Jordan never belonged to but desperately wanted to. He’s a Delhi boy pretending simplicity is something he can wear like a sweater.
The track carries the deceptive lightness of early love. Not romance; infatuation, innocence, discovery. Jordan is experiencing affection without consequence. He is not drowning yet. He is flirting with the water. The music is vibrant, full of folk flavour, rhythmically dancing like a Punjabi village afternoon. It’s a world untouched by fame, untouched by desire’s ache, untouched by the madness that will later define his entire being.
What makes the song heartbreaking in hindsight is how completely Jordan believes this softness will last forever. He sees Heer’s laughter and thinks the world will be kind. He sees their connection and thinks love will be harmless. He sees companionship and thinks it will save him. He has no idea this very love will one day eat him alive.
“Katiya Karun” is the ghost that haunts Jordan later. The memory of a version of himself who didn’t yet know that longing could ruin lives. This track is the last time he is joyful without cost. The last time his heart is light. The last time he is a boy before he becomes an emotional catastrophe.
This is Jordan at the edge of disaster, smiling like he’ll never fall.
Kun Faya Kun: the surrender that rewires his soul.
“Kun Faaya Kun” is the moment Jordan submerges into something bigger than pain, bigger than desire, bigger than identity. It is the moment he stops running away from heartbreak and lets it consume him. This is the spiritual turning point. Jordan arrives at Nizamuddin shattered but unaware that he’s about to be spiritually rebuilt, not healed, but reshaped.
The song begins like a whisper inside a wound. The harmonium hums like breath returning after grief. Rahman constructs the track like a prayer that grows its own spine. There’s no anger here. No chaos. No performance. Just surrender. Jordan lets go. Not of Heer, he will never do that, but of resistance. He stops fighting his pain. He lets it wash over him, and in doing so, he becomes an entirely different creature.
The phrase “Kun Faya Kun”, be, and it is, becomes prophecy. Jordan becomes the artist he was meant to be, not because life was kind to him, but because it was cruel. Jordan’s greatness is born not from talent, but from devastation.
Mohit Chauhan’s voice dissolves into Javed Ali’s, into Rahman’s, into the Qawwals, until the song itself becomes a spiritual organism. The music expands, blooms, lifts, as if Jordan’s soul is exhaling for the first time after holding its breath for years.
But here’s the heartbreaking truth: This transcendence doesn’t heal him. It opens him.
It creates space for more longing, more destruction, more intensity.
Jordan is reborn in this moment, but rebirth is not gentle.
Sheher Mein: the satire of the boy he’ll never be again.
“Sheher Mein” hits completely differently when it comes right after “Kun Faaya Kun.” You’ve just watched Jordan spiritually collapse and be rebuilt in the dargah, and suddenly you’re yanked into this bright, goofy, slightly cringe Bollywood studio setup where he’s singing a chirpy duet with Karthik. The whiplash is DELICIOUS. Because this is a parody of the artist he was supposed to become versus the monster he’s about to turn into.
Everything here is plastic. Manufactured. Safe. Karthik is the industry’s favourite good boy, polished and obedient. Jordan stands next to him like a firecracker wrapped in gift paper. He is already wrong for this world, already too much, already vibrating at a frequency this bubblegum pop track cannot contain. You can hear it in his voice: he’s trying to match Karthik’s tone, but his throat is built for pain, not pep. His expression is painfully awkward, like he knows he doesn’t belong here but hasn’t admitted it yet.
“Sheher Mein” becomes the satire of Jordan’s pre-madness life. This is who he would’ve been if heartbreak never cracked him open: a safe industry puppet singing jingles for shiny producers who’d never understand the depth fermenting in his chest. The chorus is catchy, but the music feels hollow on purpose: Rahman isn’t composing a hit; he’s composing a façade.
And the funniest, saddest part?
This is the version of Jordan society wanted.
The obedient one.
The likeable one.
The one who smiles on cue.
He is seconds away from implosion, but no one in the studio sees it. They see talent. They see promise. They see a future popstar.
We, however, already know the truth:
This version of Jordan is dead on arrival.
“Sheher Mein” is the grave of the boy he will never be again.
Haawa Haawa: the party he throws to avoid crying in public.
“Haawa Haawa” is Jordan’s emotional escapism wearing sequins. The song bursts open with European carnival energy, like a street parade in Prague accidentally swallowed a heartbreak. It’s loud, it’s colourful, it’s chaotic; exactly like someone trying too hard to convince themselves they’ve moved on. Jordan dances through foreign streets with armies of tourists, strangers, performers, and unbothered women, but the truth is painfully transparent: he’s running. Sprinting. Escaping himself disguised as enjoying himself.
Every “haawa haawa” sounds like a laugh he forces through clenched teeth. The track masks agony with choreography. There’s a reason the beat is “bouncy”: Jordan is bouncing off his feelings like a man dodging potholes. The music is all brass, thump, and sugar rush, but under it lies the bassline of loneliness. This isn’t joy; it’s distraction with good lighting.
Rahman masterfully composes it like an emotional costume party. Everything sparkles, but nothing warms. The tourists dance with him, but no one knows him. No one sees the ache gnawing at him. No one hears the name Heer humming under his breath. He is free geographically, but imprisoned emotionally.
Jordan is the loudest person in the parade, but the most alone.
And that’s the tragedy: he doesn’t simply miss Heer, he misses the version of himself that existed with her. “Haawa Haawa” captures the exact psychological stage where heartbreak hasn’t matured into grief yet. It’s still denial disguised as nightlife. Still longing disguised as laughter. Still devastation wearing a leather jacket and sunglasses.
This is the moment Jordan realises the world is big, but emptiness is bigger.
Aur Ho: the beginning of the emotional addiction.
“Aur Ho” comes in like an emotional gut punch after all that fake partying. This is where Jordan stops pretending. The beat slows. The light dims. The glamour evaporates. And what’s left is hunger. Not love, need. Jordan wants Heer the way a drowning man wants air, the way an addict wants another hit of oblivion. Nothing is enough. Nothing will ever be enough.
Mohit Chauhan sings with a desperation that feels almost embarrassing in its honesty, like we’re overhearing something we should not be hearing. This isn’t longing. It’s craving. It’s obsession with a heartbeat. Heer’s voice, through Alma Ferović’s ethereal timbre, haunts the track like a ghost wandering the hallways of Jordan’s ribcage. She is everywhere and nowhere. Present and absent. Alive and unreachable.
The lyrics don’t ask for love. They ask for more. More pain. More touch. More memory. More destruction. “Aur ho…” becomes the chant of a man who has lost control of his emotional appetite. The composition thickens with every verse: layered guitars, suffocating strings, rhythmic heartbeat-like pulses. It’s claustrophobic.
This song is where Jordan begins to rot beautifully.
Where love stops being a feeling and starts being a curse.
Where heartbreak becomes identity.
Heer becomes the gravitational force of his world: pulling him in, crushing him slowly. The tragedy isn’t that he’s obsessed. The tragedy is that he doesn’t want to be saved. He wants to drown in her.
“Aur Ho” is the crack in the dam.
This is where madness starts dripping in.
Tango for Taj: elegance trembling on the edge of chaos.
“Tango for Taj” is an intermission made entirely of denial. It’s crisp, elegant, European, beautifully choreographed; exactly what Jordan should sound like as an upcoming, polished international artist. But under that sophistication is a very specific kind of tension: the kind that comes from trying too hard to appear okay.
The tango is a dance of restraint. Passion in slow motion. Intimacy held at a distance. And Jordan is performing this exact emotional acrobatics. His life is unraveling internally, but externally he is gliding through hotel lobbies, press events, staged encounters, and artificial glamour. The track captures that polished emptiness perfectly.
Every violin sweep feels like a sigh he refuses to let escape. Every rhythmic step mirrors the choreography of suppressing grief while cameras watch. The instrumentation is so clean it almost feels hollow, like a beautifully decorated room that echoes because nothing truly lives there.
Jordan is at his most fragile here precisely because he is the most controlled. He’s holding the madness in with clenched teeth. You can practically hear the emotional tremor under the elegance. The tango is the perfect allegory: he is emotionally entangled with Heer even as he pretends to be emotionally unavailable to himself.
This is repression with good manners.
“Tango for Taj” is the eye of the storm: the quiet, dangerous centre where nothing moves but everything threatens to explode. Jordan is putting on a show, but the audience doesn’t realise the curtains are holding back a collapsing theatre.
This track is beautiful.
This track is terrifying.
This track is the last moment of grace before the chaos breaks open.
Tum Ko: the softness that kills him.
“Tum Ko” is the emotional knife that doesn’t stab, but glides. Smooth. Quiet. Devastating. This is Heer’s voice, her emotional truth, her version of their story. And it is painfully soft. Kavita Krishnamurthy sings like she’s afraid the song will shatter if she breathes too hard. Every note is wrapped in velvet, soaked in regret.
Heer’s love is gentle, nostalgic, inward. She loves with memory. She loves through absence. She loves in whispers. Jordan loves like fire. She loves like dusk. And in this contrast lies their undoing.
This song reveals what neither of them can say out loud: Heer is slipping away.
Her health, her marriage, her sanity, her moral compass, everything is dissolving. And Jordan, poor thing, still believes her softness is survival. But “Tum Ko” makes it painfully clear: softness can be fatal. Heer cannot withstand the intensity she unlocked in him.
The melody moves slowly, like someone sorting through old photographs. Every lyric feels like a confession she whispers to herself, not to him. It’s the sound of someone loving deeply but choosing distance because closeness is killing her.
Jordan mistakes her tenderness for hope.
But this is not hope.
This is farewell blooming quietly.
“Tum Ko” is the moment the audience realises the ending long before Jordan does. Heer is drowning in a different way, not in longing, but in consequences. And Jordan, blinded by devotion, cannot see that the love he worships is the thing hollowing her out.
The Dichotomy of Fame: the fracture made audible.
“The Dichotomy of Fame” is a 2-minute MRI of Jordan’s soul. It is the musical autopsy of a man ripped into two separate creatures: the boy who once believed in love, and the rockstar forged from suffering.
The shehnai represents innocence: Janardhan Jakhar, the Delhi boy who wanted to play guitar in canteens. Soft, earthy, rooted.
The electric guitar in basically every other song represents the icon: Jordan, the wildfire, the chaos, the legend who bleeds art and breaks rules.
This isn’t duality. This is disintegration.
Jordan wanted fame so badly he didn’t realise it would replace him. The man on stage is adored, worshipped, devoured by fans. But the man inside? He’s starving. Lonely. Empty. Screaming into expensive microphones and expensive hotel pillows.
Fame amplifies him and erases him simultaneously.
The tragedy is that the world loves the version of him that is slowly killing him. And the version of him that could’ve survived? He left that boy behind somewhere between heartbreak and hospital rooms.
“The Dichotomy of Fame” is short, yes, but it says more about Jordan’s soul than any lyric ever could.
This is the price of becoming somebody.
Nadaan Parinde: the point of no return.
“Nadaan Parinde” is the emotional death spiral. This is the moment Jordan realises he cannot go back to who he was: not to Heer, not to home, not to innocence, not to sanity. The song grabs him by the throat and drags him through every bad decision he’s ever made.
The percussion thunders like footsteps chasing him. The guitars roar like regret with a pulse. Mohit Chauhan sings with a desperation that feels feral; like he’s tearing his heart out with his bare hands. The composition is relentless. It doesn’t let Jordan breathe. It doesn’t let us breathe. Because this track is a reckoning, not a song.
“Nadaan Parinde” is Jordan crying out for the boy he used to be. The naive bird. The innocent fool. The child who believed heartbreak was poetic instead of fatal. But that boy is dead. He died the moment Heer became both salvation and destruction.
Every “ghar aaja” hits like he’s begging the past to resurrect itself. But the past cannot hear him.
And then comes the Kaaga Re stanza; the most chilling moment in the entire song. It’s not loud. It’s not dramatic. It’s not even fully musical. It’s ritualistic. The crow imagery in Punjabi and North Indian folklore has always been associated with death, departure, omens, etc. And when Jordan sings, or requests, in fact, a “crow” to eat anything but his eyes because he wants to see his love again… he’s not being metaphorical anymore. He’s basically offering his entire being to fate, to loss, to whatever cosmic creature is circling overhead waiting to devour what’s left of him, but his eyes.
This stanza is Jordan admitting he has nothing left to protect. Nothing left to hide. Nothing left to salvage. He is asking the crow to take everything, his innocence his peace, his hope; but leave his eyes intact, because even in this absolute ruin, the only thing he wants to preserve is the memory of Heer.
The crow is not a threat; it is a witness. It comes not to destroy him, but to finish the destruction he began himself.
This track is the collapse of his psyche.
The full meltdown.
The realisation that love did not save him, it swallowed him.
Jordan is no longer flying. He is free-falling with his eyes open.
Tum Ho: the love that ruins him twice.
“Tum Ho” returns like a ghost attempting closure. Where “Tum Ko” was Heer’s perspective, “Tum Ho” is Jordan’s agonised devotion. His voice doesn’t plead, it dissolves. It melts at the edges. It sounds like someone singing into the ruins of his own life.
This song is warm, but with the warmth of a dying ember. Romantic, but in the way a funeral is romantic when you love the person being buried. Jordan sings to Heer like she’s still here, still alive, still reachable, even when she is slipping away in every possible sense.
Rahman drenches the track in orchestral melancholy, strings trembling like grief held delicately between fingers. Suzanne D’Mello’s backing vocals open the heavens but only to show him what he can’t have.
The tragedy here is different from the earlier songs.
This is not obsession.
This is not hunger.
This is acceptance laced with denial.
Jordan finally realises he will never love anyone else.
But loving Heer is killing him. And losing her kills him too.
There is no version of his life where he survives.
“Tum Ho” is tenderness carved from tragedy. It is beautiful because it hurts. It is final because it stays unfinished. It is love singing its own eulogy.
This is the soundtrack of a man whose heart is a grave he keeps visiting.
Saadda Haq: the scream that becomes legend.
“Saadda Haq” arrives like an explosion after the emotional funeral of “Tum Ho.” This is Jordan clawing out of grief with pure rage. Stages of grief. This is rebellion not as ideology but as oxygen. He screams because silence is no longer an option. He screams because pain has nowhere left to go.
Mohit Chauhan’s vocals tear through the track like metal against asphalt. Orianthi’s electric guitar shreds through the air like lightning aimed directly at the institutions Jordan now despises. This is the death of politeness, the death of compliance, the death of the good boy who once sang “Sheher Mein.”
What remains is the fire.
“Saadda Haq” isn’t just an anthem; it’s the birth cry of his final form. It’s political, spiritual, emotional, personal — all layered into one volcanic eruption. Jordan is breaking free from every chain, including the ones he wrapped around himself.
But here’s the tragedy:
This song makes him famous, yes.
But it also isolates him forever.
The world worships the rebel far more than they ever would’ve loved the boy. But the rebel can’t survive the world either.
“Saadda Haq” is catharsis.
But catharsis comes with casualties.
Meeting Place: the truth he never reaches.
“Meeting Place” is the philosophical heart of the story. After all the screaming, the longing, the madness, Jordan reaches a moment of stillness. A whisper. A Rumi poem. A truth he understands too late.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.”
This is the place Jordan spent his whole life trying to reach.
A place where love isn’t punished.
Where desire isn’t criminal.
Where souls meet without consequence.
But Jordan never gets there.
He spends his life chasing a place that exists spiritually but not practically. His love lives in that field; his reality doesn’t. The poem, narrated in his voice, feels like a confession and a surrender. He finally understands what he lost, what he broke, what he couldn’t hold, and what he will never get back.
“Meeting Place” is short because the truth itself is simple:
Jordan never belonged to the world.
And the world never knew how to hold him.
Jaagran (Rockstar): the ritual of becoming a myth.
“Jaagran” is the final ritual. The cultural cleansing. The transformation of Jordan from human to myth. It is rooted in Punjabi folk, in community, in spiritual fervour; but Jordan himself is already spiritually gone.
This track is rousing, rhythmic, devotional. But for Jordan, it is hollow. A man who has seen too much ache cannot return to innocence. The music lifts, celebrates, rejoices, but he is a shell with a heartbeat.
“Jaagran” completes the circle:
He began as Janardhan Jakhar.
He ends as Jordan: an icon, a cautionary tale, a legend carved from longing.
The song represents community exalting him while he internally disintegrates. The world worships what destroyed him.
This is the sound of a man being turned into folklore.
Want more breakdowns of albums, moments, and melodies that hit harder than your morning existential crisis? Come join Her Campus at MUJ, the place where culture meets chaos, and we make it all feel strangely holy. We’re loud, we’re earnest, we’re chronically online, and we’re here to make sense of sound one emotional riot at a time. Typed dramatically by Niamat Dhillon at HCMUJ, who absolutely believes outros should feel like curtain calls and confessions.