फ़रेबी

Farebi (फ़रेबी) is the sole song on the soundtrack of Neeyat (2023), Anu Menon's ensemble whodunit starring Vidya Balan as a CBI officer investigating a string of murders at a business tycoon's country-house party. Composed and produced by Mikey McCleary, with lyrics by Kausar Munir and lead vocals by singer Lothika (credited on the release as Lothika Jha), the track was released on 3 July 2023 by T-Series, four days ahead of the film's theatrical release. As Neeyat's only original song, Farebi was designed less as a standalone hit and more as a tonal companion piece — its lyric of shared, mirrored deception ('farebi tu bhi aur main bhi', 'you're deceptive and so am I') directly mirrors the film's own title (neeyat, meaning intention) and its premise that every guest at the party has a motive to hide.

Mikey McCleary, known for stripped-back, atmospheric production across his Bollywood and independent work, keeps Farebi deliberately spare — a moody bed of understated instrumentation that leaves room for Lothika's vocal to carry the track's tension. McCleary himself is credited as a co-singer alongside Lothika on the official release, layering his own voice into the arrangement in a call-and-answer texture that suits the song's theme of two people mirroring each other's deceit. The production favours restraint over spectacle, in keeping with a thriller soundtrack that needed a single mood-setting theme rather than a chart-chasing anthem.

Kausar Munir's lyric works on a simple, mirror-image conceit: both parties in the song admit to being 'farebi' (deceptive), and their 'neeyat' (intention) is described as identical — a direct wordplay on the film's own title. Rather than building a conventional romantic arc, the lyric functions almost like a thesis statement for the film's plot, where every character at the party has motive and deception in common. The Urdu-inflected vocabulary ('farebi', 'neeyat') keeps the song in the same poetic register as much of contemporary Hindi film songwriting, while its brevity and repetition give it the character of a recurring theme cue rather than a full narrative ballad.

Neeyat, directed by Anu Menon, centres on CBI officer Meera Rao (Vidya Balan) investigating a series of murders after businessman Ashish Kapoor (Ram Kapoor), who fled India after a massive corporate collapse, is targeted at his own surprise party in a remote country house. The film's ensemble cast includes Rahul Bose, Shahana Goswami, Neeraj Kabi, Amrita Puri, Dipannita Sharma and Shashank Arora, each playing a guest with a hidden motive to want Kapoor dead. Farebi, the film's only song, was released as a promotional single on 3 July 2023, just days before Neeyat's 7 July 2023 theatrical release — a minimal-soundtrack approach typical of contemporary Hindi thrillers that use a single mood-setting track rather than a full musical interlude.

As Neeyat's only song, Farebi did not chase chart success and remains a modestly-viewed soundtrack piece rather than a mainstream hit — its official video and lyrical uploads on T-Series have drawn views in the tens of thousands to low millions range, well behind the studio's larger releases of the year. Its more notable legacy is structural: it demonstrates the growing trend of Hindi thriller and mystery films commissioning a single purpose-built theme song rather than a conventional song-and-dance soundtrack, using the lyric itself as a wink to the audience about the film's central conceit of hidden motives.