Playback singer Shilpa Rao on navigating the algorithm-driven music industry, performing with British popstar Ed Sheeran and how her National-Award winning Chaleya is not an easy song. The conversation was moderated by Suanshu Khurana and Suvir Saran

Suvir Saran: What is your day off like?
My work doesn’t feel like work. I believe you need to really love what you do. If you’re not in love with it, then it feels like a chore.

Suvir Saran: Do you work out, cook, read, travel?
All of that. You travel because it makes everything better. You have so many ideas when you travel. And, you need other art forms to inspire you. A ballet recital can inspire you to do music. I think everything starts with good food and good company.

Suvir Saran: What’s the last thing you read that stayed with you?
The Vegetarian by Han Kang.

Suvir Saran: Is there a song that’s haunted you?
Gulo mein rang bhare, baad-e-naubahar chale… It has the most beautiful couplets. When things are stressful, I just put Mehdi saab’s music and do a slow-cook mutton.

Suvir Saran: You grew up in Jamshedpur.
Yes, Jamshedpur, the Tata hub, it’s cosmopolitan. The flex of parents there is that my son or daughter got this rank at IIT or got into XLRI. It’s not about money or anything.

Suanshu Khurana: You complete two decades in the industry next year. When you look at your journey, how do you compare your 22-year-old self — an applied statistics student who walked into composer Mithun’s studio to record Tose naina (Anwar, 2007) — to the confident musician you’ve become today? Has your approach to playback music changed?
I’m not confident at all. I’m still scared like I was as a 22-year-old and I want to retain that feeling. It just makes you a more alert musician. I always have a fear that I may not be able to sing a song. It’s a good fear that you’re still bothered by doing a bad job. I don’t think I would want to change it. I also try to retain the person who went in for that first song.

Suanshu Khurana: In an ecosystem so driven by virality, where a song is now reverse-engineered to suit audience tastes, how has this altered the film song, the soundtrack to our lives that could once dig into the nation’s consciousness? Does it bother you?
Well, I do believe that your reality is your reality and you can’t be bothered by others’. So as long as you’re not gullible, you’re fine. I know there are numbers, I know there are algorithms but then, there is magic in what one person can do in that moment and change the next second. So, if I can forget everything, the algorithm, the numbers, everything, and just do something with that line which sparkles, you can change what comes next.

Suanshu Khurana: Is that why you always prefer the composer in the studio with you?
Definitely. I don’t believe in remote recordings. The energy matters. Like, Pritam being there, Vishal Shekhar being there, Rahman sir… I know there’s a lot of technology but then you need people.

Suanshu Khurana: Composer AR Rahman recently spoke of a power shift in the industry… that non-creative people were now in charge. Arijit Singh retired from the film industry. These two incidents made us look a little harder at the industry. What is happening? There are murmurs of labels controlling too much.
Like I said, if you can abstain as much as possible from being gullible and from listening to a narrative and believing it, that’s a good thing. Even if someone is making those decisions, you might lose a project or two or let go of a song or two in the commute.

Suanshu Khurana: Have you lost projects?
Yes. It happens all the time. But the bigger picture is whether you can project yourself as yourself. For example, if I have to choose between doing a run-of-the-mill kind of a song and playing it safe or choosing from an in-your-face kind of a song, I will choose the second option. Even if it fails, at least I did what is me.

Suanshu Khurana: Asha ji (Bhosle) passed away last month. Even in the male-dominated structures, Asha ji and Lata ji’s songs were quite central. Recently, there have been talks of gender inequality in the industry, with women often getting two lines in a duet. How has the woman’s playback voice evolved?
If you hear Begum Akhtar ji, Surender Kaur ji, MS Subbalakshmi ji, Farida Khanam ji, Ella Fitzgerald, Edith Piaf, Julie London, the list is endless… they sounded like themselves. You have one life, please sound like yourself. That’s what Asha ji did. That’s why there’s nobody, exactly, like her. It’s necessary to have parallels. If I’m working, and there are other singers, it’s nice to have those colleagues because we are pushing each other.

Suvir Saran: Who are your network of people in the industry whom you rely on?
It’s a long list. There’s Vishal, Shekhar, Pritam, Amitabh (Bhattacharya), Vishal Bhardwaj. There is Rahman sir. We usually converse on emails.

Suvir Saran: And are there Urdu or Hindi poets that feed your soul?
Faiz sahib, Momin Khan Momin, Mir sahib, Mirza Ghalib, Ahmed Faraz.

Suvir Saran: Your Hindustani is very clean. Did you learn to write Urdu or just Hindi?
I did learn Urdu. I was 14 when I started. My father, who is a very difficult teacher… his morning would start with a recording of Aamir Khan sahib. I heard it and loved it. My first education was in music; academics later.

Suvir Saran: So your dad taught you?
My dad was my first guru. In fact, I didn’t want to become a singer. I love music but I didn’t think I was good enough to sing. I hear these kids who sing on reality shows and they are so talented. I was not even close to that. But my father never gave up. He taught me everything he could — Hindustani classical, Carnatic music, Urdu. And finally, I realised this is what I want to do. And now we get along very well but we used to fight a lot when I was a kid.

Suanshu Khurana: I believe he tore off posters in your room when you did not practise for a few days.
He has done all that. His face is like a GPS map. He would say, ‘You didn’t catch the tune, there’s less involvement here.’ He’s like Aamir Khan in Dangal.

Suvir Saran: What is Faiz Ahmed Faiz for you? A poet, a street activist or a person who looks at history with a mirror’s gaze?
All of it. It’s not an either-or situation. When you understand poetry well, you’ll protest and be critical.

Suvir Saran: What is Carnatic music to you as a Hindustani singer?
Both are different. And if you want to do a form of music, it takes a whole lifetime. Not just to learn, to even be and live with it.

Suanshu Khurana: In terms of domination of film music, does it take away space for alternate music?
We are doing so many things here. We’re not even discussing the independent music being done in the South, which is so powerful. I listen to so many musicians from the Malayalam film industry and the indie industry, and it’s a splash of cold water on your face. I can’t even begin to imagine what kind of radical ideas they have. You don’t understand the language and you don’t need to. But it evokes something that is so beautiful. There’s so much happening in Bengali indie music. There’s not one sound that comes from India. We have so much.

Suanshu Khurana: You listened to every kind of voice as a child without a framework of what one should listen to. But the industry you are a part of defined voices in a box for a long time. Thin voices were considered suitable for female leads. You have a different bass voice that has worked really well…
I don’t have a different voice. This is my voice. I don’t like this term — you have a different face, different voice, different dressing style or a different point of view. You don’t. That’s your point of view.

Suanshu Khurana: Different for the audiences who were once used to thin, syrupy voices.
I don’t think the industry defines us. It is actually a mirror to all of you guys. Whatever you listen to, we make it. Sometimes we think, ‘Let’s leave a udta teer,’ and you catch it, make it mainstream. So, it’s all you guys who break that mould every single time.

Suanshu Khurana: In 20 years, you have had some beautiful songs, but a relatively simple, breezy number, Chaleya, got you your first National Award. How did you interpret this?
It’s not an easy song at all. It sounds breezy because there’s a lot of effort that goes into sounding effortless. The first time I got onto the microphone in Mumbai, I took three to four hours and couldn’t crack its shuffle rhythm structure. You have to sing in pockets and it has to be quantised. I gave up and went to Chennai. Energy matters. Anirudh was there, and we finished the recording in 20 minutes. So every song that you do, your entire life experience goes into it, and sometimes that’s still not enough. So, a National award, of course, isn’t something in our control but you can sing the song. So, I’m happy and grateful for all that comes my way.

Suvir Saran: Was there a song you sang more truthfully than the story that presented it?
So far, it hasn’t really happened because they acted very truthfully. I don’t think there was any mismatch with anything.

Suvir Saran: Do you teach anyone?
I’m still learning myself. I’m really bad at teaching, I have zero patience. Dad is a patient man. So, when we sit down, and say there is a ghazal by Mehdi Hasan saab, I would listen to it over and over when I want to learn it, so I can absorb it subconsciously.

Suanshu Khurana: What do you enjoy more: the thrill of live music or recording in a studio?
A live performance involves a lot of preparation. We have 25 to 30 people. It’s all about having the right team to make us sound good and give you that experience. You are moving a lot on stage. So, you need to balance the physical part with singing. For studio, you’ve done your homework all your life. But it’s something new. It’s like a man doesn’t step into the same river twice. It’s not the same river nor the same man. In the studio, it’s a new day, a new person. And you’ve got to deal with that. You’ve got to make friends with that person. And there’s always a fight until you build that friendship. Then you fly together. After the recording, you also wonder, ‘Did I really have that person inside me?’ You get to learn new things about yourself.

Suanshu Khurana: How was it working with Ed Sheeran?
We thought of doing a lot of things since Shape of You has been done so many times. Then my husband Ritesh came up with the idea of doing Chuttamalle (Devara: Part 1). He picked it up in a few minutes and we had a great time singing it on stage.