The Score Magazine - Archive February 2015 issue! | Page 14

What was your first major break in Playback singing and how did the opportunity come about? How shall we put it? Major break would possibly be a song that hit the charts and stayed on top for a long long time. That would perhaps be Tum Se Hi from Imtiaz Ali’s Jab We Met that Pritam composed. But I would think if one doesn’t break at all, no big breaks can happen at all. Simply because there will never be any chance to arrive at the bigger stuff. In that sense, my first song, Pehli Nazar from Ram Gopal Verma’s film Road. The song was filmed on Manoj Bajpayee. Just the other day, I was speaking to someone about it and he said, can you imagine, you are known for romantic songs, and the first ever song you did playback for, was on Manoj Bajpayee! That’s such an unusual debut for a romantic songs singer! As for Tum Se Hi, Pritam actually launched a man hunt for me when he wanted me to record this song. The story goes that around the time when Pritam was recording for Imtiaz’s film he thought he wanted me to do Tum Se Hi. I love to trek in the mountains and disappear every now and then for my small rejuvenating, meditative treks. That particular time I was on one such journey with no information on where I was with any of my friends in Mumbai. I was in a distant place high up in the mountains and my phone was unreachable. Pritam, my dear friend, waited for a month and more to establish contact with me and get me to record that song. The rest as they say is history. Pritam and I have done a huge number of songs since and share an amazing bond. You've been a part of some great projects such as 'Rang De Basanti' and 'Jab We Met'. What would you say is the most memorable project till date for you and why? You’re telling me to name my favourite finger and that’s an impossible job to do! But if you were to push me, then I guess the most memorable will have to be Rockstar for the sheer range that the album covered and I was singing all the songs in that album. The Rockstar album was terrific at many levels. For one, it was an album composed by A R Rahman saheb and even though I was getting to work with him for a third time, the first being Khoon Chala in Rang De Basanti and then Masakali in Delhi 6, Rockstar was the first time when I was getting to sing all the songs in the film. In that sense, Rockstar was phenomenal. For years together the trend of one singer singing all the songs in a film had been done away. In 2011 when Rockstar happened, the industry had plunged