The feature film soundtrack to the 2018 Indian Tamil-language coming-of-age romance film of the same name is composed by Govind Vasantha. The film starred Vijay Sethupathi and Trisha in the leading roles, and was directed by cinematographer C. Prem Kumar in his directorial debut. It revolves around two high school sweethearts, Ram and Jaanu, hailing from the batch of 1996 parted ways, and they meet at a reunion after 22 years. Govind was hired as the film's composer, following his relationship with Balaji Tharaneetharan during the production of Oru Pakka Kathai, where Prem Kumar handled the cinematography for the film. The delay over the film's release meant that 96 becoming the composer's third film to be released after Solo (2017) and Asuravadham (2018).
The soundtrack had eight songs in total; five of them featured only in the film. Govind had made use of minimal instruments in the film and had two playback singers Pradeep Kumar and Chinmayi, providing vocals to most of the songs in the film's soundtrack, and also serving as playback for the lead characters. One of the tracks "Kaathalae Kaathalae", was initially meant to be an instrumental, not being included in the album. But, as it received rave response, after being featured in the teaser, the song was released as a single from the film on 30 July 2018.
