Neha Bhasin reacts to her five-year-old song Jutti Meri topping the charts now

Thumak Thumak Jaandi Ae Mahiye De Naal is a line that’s all over social media, whether one understands the lyrics or not. Neha Bhasin’s Punjabi folk song, Jutti Meri, is going viral, topping charts on audio-streaming apps, including YouTube and Spotify. What makes it surprising is that Jutti Meri was released in 2020, created as a part of Bhasin and  her husband Sameer Uddin’s passion project, Folktales Live.

Bhasin remembers releasing the song — which reimagines the popular Punjabi folk song of the same name — on March 16, 2020, days before the country went into lockdown. “We couldn’t promote it at all,” laments the singer.

The song being rediscovered five years after its release makes Bhasin feel vindicated as an independent artiste who marches to her own drum. “I always wondered just because I don’t bow down to the music industry’s rules, why should my song not be a commercial hit? So, to get that is the universe telling us that we’ve been on the right path,” she smiles. 

On August 18, Jutti Meri topped the Spotify Viral 50 India list, and was seventh on the global list. It’s currently ranked sixth on the India Viral 50 chart. For musician Uddin, the song’s renaissance busts a big myth — that marketing is as important as music. “It’s encouraging to see that without spending the big bucks on ad words, marketing, influencers, and paid playlists, we [climbed the charts],” he says. 

Bhasin always believed that good art is timeless. Jutti Meri being embraced today solidifies her notion. She asserts, “Songs don’t have a shelf life. When I was a child, I was listening to yesteryear artistes, not knowing at that point what era they belong to.”

2020
When ‘Jutti Meri’ released

Sixth
Its current rank on Spotify Viral India