Lifestyle

Punjabi Gym Songs — A Workout Playlist That Actually Hits

A gym playlist is not the same thing as a good playlist. It needs tempo you can count to, a low end you can feel through cheap earphones, and vocals you can stop listening to without losing the beat. Punjabi music turns out to be unusually well supplied on all three, because the last decade of Punjabi hip-hop has been built on hard, uncluttered production. The ten below are picked for what they do to a set, not for lyrics or sentiment — a couple of them are, if you read them closely, about drinking. Ordered editorially, heaviest first, with a note on whether each one suits lifting or cardio.

1

Brown Munde
AP Dhillon, Gurinder Gill, Shinda Kahlon

The record that made the Canadian Punjabi scene impossible to ignore. It is not fast, but the low end is enormous and the delivery is flat and confident rather than frantic, which is better for heavy sets than anything hectic. Use it for lifting blocks, not for cardio.

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2

No Love
Shubh

Shubh's breakout, and one of the most-streamed Punjabi tracks of its year. A sparse beat, a lot of empty space, and a hook that just repeats — which is everything you want when you are counting reps and have entirely stopped processing the words.

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3

So High
Sidhu Moose Wala

Sidhu Moose Wala's first big record, produced by Byg Byrd, and the track that set the template for a decade of Punjabi hip-hop that followed it. The beat is aggressive without being cluttered. If only one Sidhu song goes on a gym playlist, this is the one.

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4

Don't Look
Karan Aujla

Karan Aujla over a hard, bass-forward beat that sits much closer to North American rap production than to anything folk-derived. It is one of the tracks that moved him from a respected writer for other people into a headline act in his own right.
5

G.O.A.T.
Diljit Dosanjh

The title track of Diljit Dosanjh's 2020 album G.O.A.T. He does not usually sound like this — it is a boast record, all swagger and no romance — which makes it comfortably the most gym-appropriate thing in a catalogue otherwise full of love songs.

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6

Gangland
Mankirt Aulakh

Mankirt Aulakh's best-known track, and loud and repetitive entirely by design. The beat does all the work while the vocal keeps time over the top of it, which is exactly the division of labour you want from a song you are not really listening to.

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7

Illegal Weapon
Jasmine Sandlas, Garry Sandhu

Jasmine Sandlas and Garry Sandhu trading lines over a hard electronic beat. Jasmine Sandlas is one of very few women fronting this end of Punjabi music, and her delivery is the sharpest thing on the record — it cuts through even at gym volume.

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8

Nikle Currant
Jassi Gill, Neha Kakkar

Faster than most Punjabi singles and built for movement rather than mood. That makes it a cardio track rather than a lifting one — it gives you a tempo to run to instead of a beat to brace against, which most of this list does not.
9

Kaali Camaro
Amrit Maan

One of Amrit Maan's early hits and a clean example of the mid-2010s Punjabi car song: a specific vehicle, a specific attitude, and a beat that holds a straight line from start to finish without ever changing its mind.

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10

3 Peg
Sharry Mann

Sharry Mann's biggest single. It is technically a drinking song, so the lyrics are not remotely motivational, but the tempo and the dhol pattern are — it is one of the easiest Punjabi tracks on this list to keep a steady rhythm to.

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