Permit room

90s Bar Songs: The Permit Room Playlist Nobody Wrote Down

By Vikram Shetty Published 29 August 2026 Updated 29 August 2026 6 min read

90s bar songs are the rotation that plays in an Indian permit room: formica tables, red plastic chairs, a steel jug of water, a plate of sliced onion, and a speaker bracketed high in the corner playing men being sad about their lives since roughly 1982. Twenty-five of them run on the player above.

What a permit room actually sounds like

A permit room is the ordinary Indian bar. The name comes from the liquor permit on the wall, and the format is consistent enough across the country to be a genre of architecture: a mirrored shelf of bottles lit from below, a bartender drying a glass, small square tables, chairs that stack, and one old speaker mounted too high for anyone to adjust.

The music that comes out of it is not background. It is the point. These are sharabi songs — a real and long-running strand of Hindi film music about drinking, and more precisely about what people are drinking over.

It is also worth saying plainly: the songs are largely miserable, and the room is not. A permit room at nine in the evening is mostly people talking loudly over a shared bottle. The music runs underneath that, and it is doing something more like weather than entertainment.

The full tracklist, song by song

Here is the rotation on the player above. Twenty-five hindi bar songs with the film and year:

1. Mujhko Peena Hai Peene Do · Phool Aur Angaar, 1993
2. Barsaat Ke Mausam Mein · Naajayaz, 1995
3. Mujhe Peene Ka Shauk Nahi · Coolie, 1983
4. Thodi Si Jo Pee Lee Hai · Namak Halaal, 1982
5. Peele Peele O Morey Raja · Tirangaa, 1993
6. Nashe Mein Kaun Nahi Hai · Amitabh Bachchan
7. Humka Peeni Hai · Dabangg, 2010
8. Abhi Zinda Hoon To Ji Lene Do · Naajayaz, 1995
9. Unke Nashe Mein · Shootout at Lokhandwala, 2007
10. Bahon Mein Botal · DJ Vaibhav Mix
11. De Daru De Daru · Karma, 1986
12. Saat Samundar Paar · Vishwatma, 1992
13. Mehbooba Mehbooba · Sholay, 1975
14. Aao Guru Karen Peena Shuru · Meherbaan, 1993
15. Thodi Thodi Piya Karo · Pankaj Udhas · Aafreen
16. Tum Jaise Bewadon Ka Sahara Hai · Yaaron Ne Mere Vaste
17. Do Ghoont Mujhe Bhi Pila De · Jheel Ke Us Paar, 1973
18. Mujhe Duniyawalo Sharabi Na Samjho · Leader, 1964
19. Sab To Milake Peete Hai · Arvinder Singh
20. Sharaabi · Altaf Raja
21. Jhoom Barabar Jhoom Sharabi · Qawwali
22. Main Nashe Mein Hoon · Jagjit Singh
23. One Bottle Down · Yo Yo Honey Singh
24. Main Sharabi Nahi · Khilona, 1970
25. Ishq Aur Pyar Ka Maza · Altaf Raja · Sonu Nigam

The source playlist holds 28 entries, but three are duplicate uploads of the same song, so they have been dropped here. Note how wide the span is — Mujhe Duniyawalo Sharabi Na Samjho is from 1964, One Bottle Down from 2013, and they sit in the same room without arguing.

Why bar music is slow everywhere except the bar

Every other room on this site plays music built for movement. The baraat needs tempo, the DJ trolley needs bass, the gym needs a beat. The bar is the one place where the music is deliberately not trying to get anyone to do anything.

That is a design decision, not an accident. People sit in a permit room for two or three hours. Anything with urgency in it turns the room over faster, and turning the room over is not what the room is for.

So here is the one opinion worth defending: the sharabi song is the only Indian work-adjacent genre written for staying still. Every other rotation in this collection exists to keep something moving — a procession, a bus, a haircut queue. This one exists to let an evening stop.

The ghazal half nobody expects

Look at the list and you will find Pankaj Udhas and Jagjit Singh sitting next to Honey Singh. That is not a mistake in the playlist, it is how these rooms actually run.

Pankaj Udhas built much of his career on exactly this material — Thodi Thodi Piya Karo, Main Nashe Mein Hoon — and ghazal remains a substantial part of the permit-room repertoire in a way it is not anywhere else in popular Hindi listening. A bar is one of the last public places in India where a ghazal gets played at volume to people who are not there for a ghazal concert.

There is a qawwali on the list too. Nobody planned that either.

Where to play it free

Scroll back up.

The player at the top of this page runs all 25 90s bar songs in your browser on a phone or a desktop. No account, no sign-up, no app. Press play once and it works through the list on its own, and the arrow keys skip.

Play the bar radio

The rule of thumb

If it would make a table of four go quiet for thirty seconds, it belongs. That is the whole filter. It is why the tempo never rises, why the ghazals fit, and why a song from 1964 still holds a room that also knows every word of the 2013 one.

Straight answers