Premiere: New Delhi Artist Anisha’s Piano Pop Debut ‘Stand There With You’

While most musicians would think about putting all the hype behind one single and going song by song in the age of drip-feeding music to fans, New Delhi-based Anisha Uppal (who prefers to go by her first name) decided to release two singles at the same time.

On May 26th, Anisha released the funky/jazz-informed pop track “Stand There With You” along with the softer piano ballad “You Don’t Know.” The classically trained pianist and singer says, “I wanted someone who will come hear one and then the other and hear the diversity, because that’s what the album is about.”

As someone always on the move – Anisha says she never lived in the same place for more than about four years between the age of 5 and 22 – the singer-songwriter found home in New Delhi in around 2014. From Switzerland to China to Vietnam, she found solace in playing piano and writing poetry. A fixture who occasionally gigged in the capital’s jazz clubs, Anisha also performed keys for singer-songwriter Hanita Bhambri and is now prepping a 12-track debut album, taking bits and pieces from life on the move. “That’s kind of the space this album comes from – the idea of my experiences of ‘Do I belong here? Who am I becoming?’ It was such a drastic change,” Anisha says.

About five years on, Anisha has certainly found her footing and puts forward a well-prepared pop sound on “Stand There With You,” which was arranged and produced by Adhiraj Kabir Mustafi, from Gurugram’s Eastwind Academy of Advanced Music and Performance. Although she’s a pianist first, “Stand There With You” was written on the guitar first and then went under different arrangements by Mustafi. She says, “I would put it as funk pop, but somebody else put it as jazz pop, so I guess pop is common.”

“Stand There With You” introduces Anisha as a pop singer not just sonically, but also visually. The music video – which takes a behind-the-scenes look at the photoshoot behind her song cover art – sees Anisha dressed up, glammed out and singing about love and having no regrets. With a plan to release two-song packages gradually off the album, Anisha also has an eye on organizing more invite-only gigs, like her launch show on May 26th in New Delhi. “I think I’m moving towards organizing those kind of gigs and my own mini-concerts. I like to keep the audience really small so that everybody feels they have space to listen. It creates intimacy,” she says.

Watch the video for “Stand There With You” below. Stream the songs here. Subscribe to her channel here.