Roja (soundtrack)

Roja is the debut soundtrack album of music composer A. R. Rahman, featuring lyrics by Vairamuthu. It is the soundtrack to the 1992 Tamil film of the same name, directed by Mani Ratnam, and starring Aravind Swamy and Madhoo. The album features seven tracks in Tamil and Hindi, and six tracks in Malayalam, Telugu, Marathi and five tracks in the instrumental adaptation album. The song "Thamizha Thamizha" is a poem written by Subramanya Bharathi. "Chinna Chinna Aasai" was the first song Rahman had composed for the film. The song "Kadhal Rojave" has two versions in both Tamil and Hindi; a solo and a duet in the former. The Hindi version of the song was titled "Roja Jaaneman" has two versions – one by S. P. Balasubrahmanyam and the other by Hariharan. Released on Lahari Music & T-Series, it was also listed in Time magazine's "10 Best Soundtracks" of all time. It also fetched the National Film Award for Best Music Direction for A. R. Rahman and the National Film Award for Best Lyrics for Vairamuthu. The Tamil and Hindi versions of the album sold over 3 million units in India, with the Tamil version selling over 200,000 units and the Hindi version selling 2.8 million units. The Hindi version of the album earned ₹7.5 crore (equivalent to ₹58 crore or US$6.0 million in 2023) in sales.