Shopping by Maninder Buttar

The Shopping album has several strong tracks, but Shopping is the one most listeners come back to first. Archie sets the tone from the very first bar — it is clear from the opening notes that this song means business.

Maninder Buttar's vocal here has a quality that is difficult to describe but impossible to miss — it simply feels true. For fans of a talented ensemble cast, Shopping is one of those songs that immediately conjures specific scenes and emotions.

The song dates from 2020, but nothing about it sounds dated — the emotions it captures are not tied to a moment. Listeners have described the experience of Shopping differently — romantic, melancholic, uplifting — which suggests the song is large enough to hold many truths.

Running to 2:57, the song is exactly as long as it needs to be, which is the hardest length for a songwriter to find. Songs like Shopping are the reason people fall in love with Punjabi music and never quite fall out of it.