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10 Most Famous Indian singers
India is a vast country with a population of 1.3 billion people as of 2020. These people are talented in various fields. Indians have excelled in science, medicine, arts, culture, music, business, politics and entertainment too.
Indian music is made up of several genres in multiple varieties and forms. This includes classical music, folk, rock, and pop.
The history of music in India goes back several years and developed over time. There are great men and women from this great country that have successful careers in music.
Much of this talent can be experienced through a pool of nationals who have repeatedly worked hard to help India stand tall in the world forum.
India has shared its talent with the world through classic singers who have redefined the music industry in the country.
Most Indian music involves well-choreographed dances that captivate its audience.
Read more on the 10 most famous Indian singers.
1. Lata Mangeshkar
Video Courtesy of YouTube
Lata is fondly known as the Nightingale of India. Mangeshkar is one of the most prominent and highly respected singers of Indian cinema.
She has won tributes and countless awards including four-film fare awards for playback singing and two special film fare awards.
Starting her playback singing career in the mid-40s, Lata was featured in several films such as Aap ki seva mein (1946) and Badi maa (1945).
Having had a career for more than 7 decades, Lata has worked with almost every music composer in India including Naushad, S.D. Burman, and R.D. Burman.
Some of her popular songs are Tujhe Bulayen Yeh Meri and Jab Hum Jawan. Her popular albums are Mata, Retro Chill Out, Soft Instrumentals among others.
She has received numerous awards such as Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian award of India and Padma Vibhushan, the second-highest civilian award of India.
2. Shreya Ghoshal
Shreya is said to be the 4th most popular singer in the country. She was born in 1984 and started her singing career in 1998.
Several of her songs are popular and have gotten a lot of airplay in India such as Yeh Kya Hua, Jaadu Hai Nasha Hai, and Suna Suna.
Shreya Ghosal started her career singing 5 songs for Sanjay Leela Bansali’s Devdas (2002) in Hindi films.
As her career progressed, Shreya established herself as one of Bollywood’s prominent playback singers.
Other than working as a lead playback singer in Hindi cinema, she has also songs in other languages like Marathi, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Oriya, Gujrati, Nepali, and many others.
In April 2013, she was honoured in London by the selected members of the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
Further, in 2017, Ghoshal became the first Indian singer to have her wax figure displayed in the Indian wing of Madame Tussauds Museum in Delhi.
3. Alka Yagnik
Alka is another famous Indian singer known for her playback singing in Indian cinema. Her career began as a playback singer in 1980 for the movie Payal ki jhankaar.
Whereas her big break in the industry happened after singing the song ‘Ek does teen’ from tezaab in 1988.
She has had over 3 decades of success in singing and has produced more than 20,000 songs. Several of her songs are considered to be memorable in Indian cinema.
Some of her most popular songs include Kuch Kuch Hota hai from Kuch Kuch Hota hai (1998), Jadu hai from Ghulam (1998), hum tum from hum tum (2004).
Alka has topped the charts for months and has had more than 400 million views on YouTube. Additionally, she has sung in more than 25 languages.
4. Asha Bhosale
Photo by Firoze Edassery – Wikimedia
Asha is one of the few singers whose contribution to the Indian film industry has been epic. Her career started in the early 1950s and had her big break in 1957.
This was through a film that gave one of her songs recognition as a playback singer.
Bhosale has had a successful career for more than 6 decades, in the course of which, she won seven film fare awards.
Additionally, Asha has collaborated with every prominent music composer of the Indian cinema including O.P. Nayyar, S.D. Burman, Kalyanji Anandji, and A.R. Rahman.
In 2011, she was officially acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most recorded artist in music history.
5. Neha Kakkar
Neha started her singing career when she was 4 years old. Her parents took her to music school to perfect her talent.
She was a contestant in Indian Idol but was eliminated early in 2005. Neha had her Bollywood debut as a chorus singer in the film Meerabai Not Out. Other than her vocals, Neha was given minor roles in the film.
Her single track Second Hand Jawaani from Cocktail gave her that break she needed in the music industry.
This was followed by several popular party songs including “Sunny Sunny” from Yaariyan and “London Thumakda” from Queen.
In 2019, she was listed among the most viewed female artists on YouTube with 4.2 billion views. Then in 2021, Neha became the first Indian singer to win a YouTube Diamond Award.
6. Arijit Singh
Arijit is another famous Indian singer who became famous in 2005. This was after he took part in a singing reality show Fame Gurukul.
Although he was eliminated, he became popular and rose to become the highest-paid playback singer of Bollywood. This was back in 2011.
Arijit Singh remains to be the most celebrated singer of the current decade. He is one of the most sought after playback singers in India.
Several Hindi films have Arijit featured a playback singer. He has won five film fare awards and numerous other accolades over the years.
Some of Arijit’s popular songs are ‘phir mohobat’ from Murder 2 (2011), Raabta from Agent Vinod (2012), kabira from yeh jawani hai deewani (2013), Mast Magan from 2 states (2014), soch na sake from airlift (2016).
7. Sonu Nigam
Photo by Vaikoovery – Wikimedia
Sonu Nigam is one of the most popular Bollywood playback singers of the last three decades.
His career in playback singing goes back to the early 1990s with the song ‘O aasmaan wale’ from Aaja meri Jaan (1993).
Today, Nigam has sung for over 80 Bollywood films and recorded over 20 music albums.
Sonu is described as one of the few versatile playback singers of the Indian film industry with five film fare awards to his name.
He sings mainly in Hindi and Kannada language films but also in Odia, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, and Nepali.
Nigam has over 5,000 released songs to date and this has earned him the title Modern Rafi. In 2018, he received an honorary doctorate from Teerthanker Mahaveer University for his outstanding contribution to the field of music.
- Kumar Sanu
Several playlists from the 90s in India have a song or more by Kumar Sanu. He has earned the title of an acclaimed playback singer in Bollywood.
His singing career began in the late 1980s when he went by the name Kedarnath Bhattacharya.
Later on, he changed his name to Kumar Sanu as well as his singing style. The new style was greatly influenced by the legendary singer Kishore Kumar.
In his career, he holds a record of having won five consecutive film fare awards.
Several of his tracks have been featured in BBC’s “Top 40 Bollywood Soundtracks of all time”.
9. Rajesh Khanna
Rajesh has been nicknamed the “First Superstar” of Bollywood and has appeared in a record of 15 successful films between 1969 to 1971.
During the peak of his career in the 70s and 80s, Rajesh was the highest-paid actor in Hindi cinema.
Some of his accolades include 4 BFJA Awards and five Filmfare Awards. In 2013 he was posthumously awarded the Padma Bhushan. This is India’s third-highest civilian honour.
He also received the IIFA Lifetime Achievement award in 2009.
10. Armaan Malik
Armaan Malik won two Global Indian Music Academy Awards (GiMA) in 2015. This made him one of the youngest singers to ever win a couple of debut awards at GiMA.
His first on-screen performance was in the film Kaccha Limboo in the year 2011.
Malik also received other prestigious awards like Stardust Award, Filmfare R. D. Burman Award, and South Indian International Movie Award.
In 2020, he became the first Indian artist to hit No. 1 on the Top Thriller Global Billboard charts twice.
He released his second English single, “How Many,” in which he incorporated Indian tabla on the beat.
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