Guru Randhawa’s latest song Fine Shyt, featuring singer Yashvi Desai, has sparked an online backlash within days of its August 6 release.
The music video, which also features social media creator Ruhee Dosani, has drawn criticism for its lyrics, corporate-office setting and portrayal of women, while the song itself has been mocked online for its attempt to tap into Gen Z slang.
Set inside a corporate office, the video features Randhawa as a senior professional while women around him dance and sing.
It opens with a disclaimer stating, “As always, all artists in this video are above 18, including me. This video is a work of fiction, camp and satire. Highly advise you don’t try this at your actual 9-to-5 unless you want to be permanently banned from the office by HR. No corporate policies were harmed.”
Despite the disclaimer, viewers have questioned the use of a workplace as the backdrop for what they see as a sexualised portrayal of women.
The Internet Is Not Impressed
A significant part of the reaction has focused on the track itself, with users mocking its lyrics, title and attempt to use Gen Z slang.
The song is being brutally trolled online, with users comparing Randhawa’s latest track to the formulaic pop associated with Tony Kakkar.
Online reactions repeatedly mocked the song’s repetitive hook, lyrics and choreography, with some users joking that Randhawa had become “Tony Kakkar 2.0.”
One X/Twitter user wrote, “Ye kya bawasir bana diye ho.” Another user wrote, “We the Punjabi people respectfully would like to disassociate and disown whatever this fine shyt business is.”
The song has also quickly become meme fodder.
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On various Reddit discussions, the reaction was similarly dismissive. On the subreddit r/TwentiesIndia, one user wrote, “His downfall should be studied. First se*ualised minor girls, now corporate setting.”
While another on r/BollyBlindsNGossip wrote, “Guru Randhawa’s cringe fest has moved from school to workplace.”
The mockery, however, was only one layer of the backlash. Beneath the memes was a more serious criticism of the song’s lyrics and, particularly, the way women are presented in the video.
When The Office Becomes The Problem
Much of the criticism centres on the song’s sexualised imagery inside a corporate workplace.
X/Twitter user @Adi_183 wrote, “This song is misrepresenting life in the corporate world. Unless they’re referring to the work that people do – some of it is ‘shyt’, but I wouldn’t call it ‘fine’.”
Another user questioned the direction Randhawa’s music has taken, writing, “I miss when Guru Randhawa made proper naach walay gaanay ye kya naya bakwaas shuru kardiya.”
The reaction has also appeared under Instagram discussions of the controversy. One commenter asked, “What is this! I just hear it here first….how was this even allowed?”
Another questioned the women’s participation in the video, writing, “And more so why women in the video are agreeing to do this, this needs to change. Women need to start respecting themselves.”
The choreography itself has also become part of the mockery. One Reddit user on r/InstaCelebsGossip described the dance moves as “equally bad along with the music.”
While another wrote, “What is this obsession to make scantily clad office women or students dance in MVs? He’s recreating his own gaze. This is cringe-worthy. We can’t have normal love songs anymore.”
These reactions shift the conversation from disliking a song to questioning how women are represented in it.
What Exactly Are Viewers Objecting To?
The song repeatedly focuses on a woman’s physical attractiveness, using references to luxury cars and celebrity beauty to describe her.
The lyrics include comparisons involving Audi, Ferrari, G-Wagon and Maybach, while another line compares a woman to Kate Winslet’s character in Titanic.
Combined with choreography that places female performers around Randhawa in an office setting, the video’s visual language has led some viewers to question whether the corporate setting is simply a modern wrapper around a familiar music-video trope.
The Slang That Became The Joke
Then there is the phrase at the centre of the song itself – “fine shyt.”
The slang is generally used to describe someone considered highly attractive.
Its use in a mainstream song has become another source of ridicule, with users questioning whether Randhawa’s attempt to sound current actually made the song feel dated.
One X/Twitter user described the song as “trash” while asking why Randhawa was using “fine shyt” in 2026, adding, “we left this vocab in 2025 guru bro.”
Another user joked that there were several languages and “the entire vocabulary” available for lyrics, yet Randhawa chose Fine Shyt.
It Isn’t Just About What Women Wear
Research on music videos has repeatedly examined the difference between showing sexuality and reducing women to sexual objects.
A 2011 content analysis of music videos by Jennifer Stevens Aubrey and Cynthia Frisby found that, compared with male artists, female artists were “more sexually objectified, held to stricter appearance standards” and more likely to display sexually alluring behaviour.
Objectification is not determined simply by revealing clothes or sensual dancing. It also depends on how women are presented within the larger visual narrative.
The criticism of Fine Shyt should therefore not become an argument about women dressing provocatively or dancing suggestively. The more relevant question is what role they have within the visual narrative.
Are they being presented as performers and characters with agency, or primarily through their appearance for someone else’s gaze?
This debate has resurfaced recently as well. Actor Tamannaah Bhatia has spoken about how female performers are viewed in dance numbers, saying, “It’s a party number, it’s a dance number. So for me, that’s how I look at this space. I don’t look at it like an item because I feel these eventually become party songs.”
Bhatia’s point is that a sensual dance performance should not automatically be reduced to an “item” performance; female performers can also have agency.
Read more: In Pics: Indian Songs That Talk About Women In Bad Light
The Male Gaze Behind The Modern Workplace
A 2025 study by Forhana Choudhury and Swati Sharma examining sexist item songs in Bollywood analysed responses from 310 working professionals alongside a review of 62 previous articles.
Their analysis described a recurring dynamic involving a “dominant, controlling male” and a “powerless, submissive female.”
The study argues that such representations can reinforce conventional gender roles by repeatedly positioning men as active subjects and women as objects within popular entertainment.
Fine Shyt is not an item song in the traditional Bollywood sense. But the comparison raises a relevant question. Has the setting changed while the underlying visual dynamic remained familiar?
When A New Setting Doesn’t Mean A New Idea
A school. A nightclub. A party. Now, a corporate office.
The setting may change, but the criticism can remain remarkably similar when women continue to be positioned primarily through their bodies and appearance.
The 2025 study argues that sexist representations can continue because established patterns of production and consumption are difficult to break.
Its findings suggest that simply changing the visual setting does not necessarily challenge the gender norms embedded in the representation.
Guru Randhawa’s Response
Randhawa eventually responded to the backlash on Instagram, asking people to “calm down” and describing the phrase as “a silly little slang.” He also said he was “low-key loving the edits” surrounding the song.
His response did not amount to an apology or a withdrawal of the song. Instead, Randhawa appeared to treat much of the backlash as part of the internet’s reaction to the track.
Fine Shyt Isn’t The First Time
In 2025, Randhawa’s Azul faced backlash over its portrayal of schoolgirls and what critics described as an inappropriate teacher-student dynamic. The controversy eventually led Randhawa to restrict comments on his Instagram posts.
One Instagram commenter even pointed to the backlash around Azul, writing, “His previous song azul was just like this and got the same backlash. Seems like he’s doing it for publicity.”
More recently, Badshah’s Tateeree faced criticism over its lyrics and school-set visuals. The controversy escalated beyond social media, with women’s rights authorities becoming involved.
Badshah subsequently apologised and released an altered version of the song with the controversial portions removed.
The settings were different, but the criticism followed a familiar path. Women or girls were placed in environments where sexualised framing became the controversy. With Fine Shyt, the school has simply been replaced by the corporate office.
Why Does The Formula Keep Coming Back?
The 2025 study on sexist item songs suggests that the issue goes beyond individual controversial songs. It points to a recurring pattern in how women are represented in popular music.
That makes the Fine Shyt debate bigger than whether the song is vulgar, cringe or simply bad. It becomes a question of how easily an old representation can be repackaged as something new.
So, Is Indian Music Actually Changing?
The industry has clearly changed its aesthetics. Songs now borrow from social-media language, internet culture and meme formats. Music videos can look like Instagram reels, workplace sketches or deliberately viral content.
But representation can lag behind aesthetics.
Fine Shyt looks contemporary on the surface – a corporate office, internet slang, social-media humour and a deliberately self-aware disclaimer.
Yet the criticism suggests that some viewers see something much more familiar underneath it. A male performer at the centre, women functioning largely as visual attractions and lyrics focused heavily on their appearance.
The question isn’t whether women can be sexy on screen. They can.
It is whether the industry can portray female sexuality without making women themselves the object of the joke, the gaze or the narrative.
From Cringe To A Bigger Conversation
Fine Shyt may eventually disappear from everyone’s feed, replaced by the next viral song, meme or controversy.
But the conversation it has triggered is older than the song itself. The slang will change. The aesthetics will change. The setting will change.
But if the representation remains the same, how new is the song really?
Image Credits: Google Images
Sources: India Today, The Times of India, The Indian Express
Find the blogger: @diptisadh
This post is tagged under: Guru Randhawa, Fine Shyt, regressive lyrics, fine shyt controversy, Guru randhawa Fine Shyt, women in music videos, music industry, male gaze, objectification of women, Gen Z slang, punjabi music, Azul, Tateeree, Badhshah, Tamannaah Bhatia
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