Priyadarshini (singer)
Priyadarshini is a playback singer who was born in India and brought up in Singapore. Her first song was recorded with veteran singer, and Padma Shri winner, Hariharan for the Tamil film Kadhal Dot Com under music director Bharadwaj.
Childhood
Priyadarshini lived in Doha, Qatar, for a few years then moved to Singapore with her family. She became a champion in the tertiary category of the Singapore radio station Oli 96.8’s singing competition. The prize for the competition was the opportunity to meet popular personalities in the film industry and classical music fields. Priyadarshini got a chance to meet and interact with Kamalhassan, Illayaraja, Deva, Ajith Kumar, Nithyasree Mahadevan, P. Unni Krishnan, Devayani and many others.
She continued her singing career with the Television Corporation of Singapore. Priyadarshini spent her time shuttling between school, music, keyboard, TV programmes and music competitions. It was well balanced because of the support from her mother Sumathi who used to accompany her and the encouragement of her father Ram.
She studied electrical and electronics engineering at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She continued to be involved with music and completed her degree with distinction.
Playback singing
While working on her engineering degree, Priyadarshini visited India on holidays and met with her relations in Chennai. During one of those visits, her dad took her to meet music director Bharathwaj. He asked her to sing and she sung his song "Unnodu Vazhadha" from the movie Amarkalam. After a few months, she got a call from Bharadwaj and flew down from Singapore to record the song. She sang a duet with Hariharan. She relocated to India to pursue her music career.
Since then she has sung for over 50 movies in Tamil, Kannada and Telugu. She was introduced to the Kannada film industry by music director Rajesh Ramnath.
She has also sung for renowned music directors like Hamsalekha, Mano Murthy, Bharadwaj, Gurukiran, R P Patnaik, Rajesh Ramnath, K Kalyan, Venkat Narayan, Ravish A T, M N Krupakar, C R Bobby, S A Rajkumar, D. Imman and others.
Priyadarshini has also completed many devotional albums and jingles.