Chithra won the Tamil Nadu State Film Award for Best Female Playback for the song "Kannalane". "Kannalane", also known as "Kehna Hi Kya", is based on Qawwali, a form of Islamic Sufi music. Vairamuthu won the Tamil Nadu State Film Award for Best Lyricist, and K. Rahman won the Filmfare Best Music Director Award (Tamil) for the soundtrack. In 2014, BBC Music listed Bombay among their "20 Greatest Soundtracks" of all time, and selected the instrumental "Bombay Theme" as its standout track. In 2007, the soundtrack was included in The Guardian's "1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die" list, and the Hindi version of the song "Kannalane", titled "Kehna Hi Kya", was included in their "1000 Songs Everyone Must Hear" list in 2009. The soundtrack also found success across India in its dubbed Hindi and Telugu versions. Since its release, the soundtrack for Bombay has been influential, both nationally and internationally. PolyGram MIL later merged in Universal Music.
Soon after the original released, in 1995 it was also released in Hindi and in Telugu by Polygram MIL. The soundtrack album was originally released in Tamil in December 1994. "Bombay Theme" has appeared in various international films and music compilations, while "Kannalanae" and "Bombay Theme" have been sampled by various international artists. The song " Hamma" was later reused in Ok Jaanu (2017) as "The Humma Song". The soundtrack was included in The Guardian's "1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die" list, and the song "Kannalanae" sung by K S Chitra was included in their "1000 Songs Everyone Must Hear" list. The soundtrack of the film became one of the best-selling Indian music albums of all time, with sales of 15 million units. The lyrics for the Hindi and Telugu versions were written by Mehboob and Veturi, respectively. The lyrics for the Tamil version were written by Vairamuthu, except for the song "Halla Gulla", which was written by Vaali. The soundtrack was thus released in multiple languages. The Indian film was originally a Tamil film dubbed into Hindi, Telugu and Malayalam. The film was directed by Mani Ratnam, and stars Arvind Swamy and Manisha Koirala, while the soundtrack album was released in 1995 by Pyramid. Bombay is the soundtrack to the 1995 Indian film of the same name, with eight tracks composed by A.