The singer has been named as the “undisputed queen of playback singing” by Asjad Nazir of Eastern Eyes. She is known to have recorded songs in 13 different languages. Her singing career began at a very young age. Till date she has managed to shine like a bright star in the “Top 100 celebrities of India”, “50 power women of 2016” list of Verve’s and the Top 10 most searched Indian singer. Let’s get to know about this melodious personality a bit more.
14 Facts about Shreya Ghoshal
1. Commonwealth performances
Some well known personalities like Sunidhi Chauhan, shiamak Darvar, Sonu Nigam and Shreya Ghoshal have performed in the theme song of Commonwealth games 2010, also at the closing ceremony in 2006 and the invitation to the commonwealth games in Delhi.
2. Wax figure
She is the very first Indian singer to have her wax figure placed in the Madame Tussauds Museum in Delhi, this was dated back in March 2017.
3. Viral song
She sang the song “Manwa laage” from Happy new year in the year 2014. And this crossed over 2 million views in the first 48 hours of release on YouTube.
4. Acting career
Her debut film was “Saaya” which was released in 2003 where she was a schoolgirl who sang the song “Har Taraf”. After this hit she was offered several other roles which she denied as acting wasn’t her stream of interest at all.
5. Debut Song
‘Bairi Piya’ , a song we all loved to hear at any given time, was her first blackback singing gig with the very famous ‘Udit Narayan’. This song even got her a National Film award for best female playback singer.
6. Reality show winner
When she was 16 , the show ‘Sa Re Ga Ma’ on Zee TV was one of the shows she participated in and even won the title in the year 2000. This is how her singing career began.
7. Education qualification
She got herself admitted into the Atomic Energy Junior College to study Science, later dropped out of the same to join SIES college of arts, science and commerce, in Mumbai opting for English as her major.
8. Dola Re Dola Re
Her talent was identified by the legendary Sanjay Leela Bhansali. The director thought the character of Paro needed the certain innocence which was present in Ghoshal.
9. A day named after her
The state of Ohio U.S had honoured her with a day named ‘Shreya Ghoshal Day’ which was declared to be on 26 June by the Governor Ted Strickland.
10. Topping songs in 10 languages
The songs were in languages like Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Assamese , Gujarati, Bengali, Nepali, Hindi and Tamil, to be specific.
11. Writes her lyrics in Hindi
No matter which language she is singing in she always writes her songs in Hindi language, this helps her phonetics right. Imagine her singing the song blockbuster from Sarrainodu in hindi.
12. Variety of Genres
She has sung in five different genres which are Classical, pop, Bhajan, Filmi and Ghazal.
13. Discovery of her talent
Though Sanjal Leela Bhansali was the first one to give Shreya her first project but it’s surprising to know that it was his mother Leela Bhansali who identified her talent by watching her in the 75th special children episode of Sa Re Ga Ma show she called up Sanjay to watch Shreya singing and after which he decided to give her a chance in his next film.
14. Formal training
Her formal classical music training started at the age of six. Started learning from Late Kalyanji Bhai for eighteen months, before continuing her training with Late Mukta Bhinde.
It’s not singing that Shreya is fond of but she loves cooking , traveling and reading books too like any other normal person. Her journey as a singer started as a participant from a singing reality show and brought her to the post of a judge at various reality singing shows a few years later. This shows how a perfect combination of talent, hard work, perseverance and dedication pays off.