On His 37th Birthday, Arijit Singh Remains a Globally Loved Voice

Arijit Singh, the renowned singer, producer, composer and founder of the label Oriyon Music has been among the most memorable voices in Indian music. He turns 37 years old today. Starting in playback singing in 2010 with composer Sandeep Chowta‘s “Neeve Na Neeve Na” from the ‘Kedi,’ Singh has rarely had to look back since.

New data offered by Spotify India breaks down Singh’s popularity. While it’s been widely reported that he’s in the top five most-followed artists on Spotify (just behind Taylor Swift at number 3), there’s a lot more at play. Singh owes that largely due to his yearly appearance on the streaming platform’s annual Wrapped findings. With songs like “Kesariya” from the movie Brahmastra by composer Pritam and lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya, Singh became an unmissable name in 2022 and has kept that going.

On Spotify, Pritam remains the composer with whom Singh has the most streamed songs, along with A.R. Rahman, chiefly due to the success of songs like “Agar Tum Saath Ho” from 2015 movie Tamasha, with lyrics by Irshad Kamil. While “Kesariya” is inching towards 500 million total streams mark, “Agar Tum Saath Ho” has amassed nearly 400 million streams. The latter also remains Singh’s most streamed song from before Spotify India’s launch in 2019.

In the years since Spotify was available in the country, from 2020 to 2023, Singh’s listenership grew by close to 650 percent in India on the platform. In the same duration, his listenership grew by over 140 percent in both the U.S. and the U.K.

Outside of India, where countries have had Spotify for longer, the streaming platform says that Singh has a significant listener base in the U.S., the U.K., along with countries like Canada, Indonesia, Bangladesh, and Pakistan among others, in no particular order.

Often associated with keywords like sad, romantic and lo-fi in the playlists made by users on Spotify, another look into Singh’s listener base shows that the highest percentage of Arijit Singh’s listeners on Spotify are 18-22 years of age, followed by 23-27 years. Close to 40 percent of his listeners on the platform are female, while just under 60 percent are male.   

Based on Spotify’s “fans also like” insights, other artists that fans of Arijit Singh listen to include singers and composers Neha Kakkar, Pritam, KK, Armaan Malik and Darshan Raval, among others.

The stats point towards Singh’s unfaltering royalty and influence and it’s perhaps helped by the artist’s modest demeanor. Currently performing across the world – including Dubai’s Coca-Cola Arena on April 27th – Singh said in an interview with The Music Podcast (aired in late 2023) that he still deals with rejection. “I deal with rejection normally. I’ve understood one thing, I’m not so important. I’ve stopped giving myself that much value,” he told host and music entrepreneur Tarsame Mittal.

Formally trained in Indian classical and a true disciple of Bengali music as well as Western classical, Singh first earned the national spotlight being part of music reality show Fame Gurukul in 2005. In The Music Podcast interview, Singh talks about the path that artists have to take in India, “Decide if you want to do playback or be an independent artist. If you want to do playback, you have to convince about a hundred people that your voice is worth it. Just convince them and make them like it.”

In Singh’s case, he convinced everyone from Sandeep Chowta to Sunny M.R. to Pritam, Rahman and the list was then endless until he became the most sought-after artist in Indian music today.

At the center of it is Singh’s inimitable croon, one that sets the tone of any song he’s involved in. He cites watching the likes of master vocalist Shankar Mahadevan as a formative influence he based his approach to vocals on. He tells Mittal in The Music Podcast in terms of advice for aspiring singers, “Another aspect is texture – this is because of Pritam da and his influence in music. You also have to think about word to word expression, for each hero, you have to deliver the correct expression for each word, so that it becomes cinematic. It has to emote well. Either that, or you have to make it feel alive.”

As for his own aspirations, while Singh has launched Oriyon Music and dived in filmmaking as well as philanthropic ventures, he still has a few global names he’d love to collaborate with. True to anyone who grew up listening to popular English music in the Nineties and early 2000s, Singh name-checks everyone from Eric Clapton to Justin Timberlake, John Mayer (“I fancy his work,” Singh tells Mittal), Cristina Aguilera, Robbie Williams and composing great Hans Zimmer as people on his wish list. He adds more recent hitmakers like Post Malone and Martin Garrix to the list. “Coldplay would be a dream. I don’t expect it to happen,” Singh says in The Music Podcast.

Singh’s humility remains deeply woven in to his life. When asked about the “real” Arijit Singh beyond all the stereotypes that form out of public perception of being one of India’s most successful musicians in recent times, the artist says there’s a thin line. He says in the interview, “Arijit Singh in name from childhood and the one today is quite different. There’s a theater that’s setup today. I was able to associate myself with that name at first, it’s your name in school and the one you write when you answer an examination paper. When the name became popular, when other people start calling you, then it becomes overwhelming initially – that so many people are calling out to you.”

He adds, “After a point, you understand that the name is not you, it’s just people’s perception. No one calls me by my name at home or even in office. For me, the name has become a joke in my personal life, and it’s become irritating – that I don’t want to hear that name. When I used to hear my own songs, I used to get irritated, but now I’ve let go. I guess other people want to hear it.”