Abhijeet Bhattacharya

Abhijeet Bhattacharya, better known as Abhijeet, is a Bollywood playback singer born to a successful businessman turned editor, Dhirendranath Bhattacharya and his wife Kamladevi Bhattacharya in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. He married a fashion designer Sumati Bhattacharya in 1990 and has two sons Dhruv Abhijeet Bhattacharya and Jai Abhijeet Bhattacharya. Abhijeet began his Bollywood career formally in 1990 with the film Baaghi. He has sung songs in more than 18 languages including Bengali, Odia, Bhojpuri, Marathi and Gujarati. He won Filmfare Award in 1997. He has also released many Indian pop albums. He has also judged popular Indian reality shows like Indian Idol and Sa Re Ga Ma Pa and Sa Re Ga Ma Pa L'il Champs several times.

Career

Abhijeet left home for Mumbai in 1981 to study Chartered Accountancy. After completing a degree in CA during Internship, due to his fascination for singing and music, Bhattacharya decided to pursue a career in playback singing.

After struggling for food, shelter and work for more than two years in Mumbai, he received a call from Rahul Dev Burman whom he considers as his Godfather, to sing for Dev Anand's son's debut film Anand Aur Anand in 1984. This was his debut film and in his very first movie, he got the opportunity to sing a song along with his idol Kishor Kumar, Asha Bhonsle and Lata Mangeshkar. Despite of successful music, the film didn't do well at box office and Abhijeet's career failed even before getting started and he had to struggle again for further 6 years until 1990 when composer duo Anand-Milind reintroduced him in Salman Khan starrer "Baaghi".

In the 1990s and 2000s, Abhijeet became one of the top choice among the music directors along with Kumar Sanu and Udit Narayan. His songs include work from the film Baaghi, composed by Anand-Milind: "Ek Chanchal Shokh Hasina"," "Chandni Raat Hai" and "Har Kasam Se Badi Hai". This was followed by several chartbusters from movies such as Khiladi, Shola Aur Shabnam both of which were also box office hits. Then in 1994, he performed for movies like Yeh Dillagi ("Ole Ole"), Anjaam, Raja Babu and Main Khiladi Tu Anari. He won the Filmfare Best Playback Singer Award for Yes Boss in 1997. He went on to record for the movies Baadshah, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Josh, Dhadkan, Raaz, Tum Bin, Chalte Chalte, Main Hoon Na, Dil Se Pooch Kidhar Jaana Hai and many others. Grahan (2004) has two songs sung by him: "Kehte Hai Jis Ko" and "Chup Chup" with Kavita Krishnamurty and Asha Bhosle, respectively.

In a career spanning over two decades, he went behind the microphone to lend his voice to the portrayals of Bollywood stars including Shah Rukh Khan, Saif Ali Khan, Salman Khan Suniel Shetty, Hrithik Roshan Ajay Devgan Akshay Kumar Akshaye Khanna and Ranbir Kapoor, and rendered his voice in a range of genera from romantic and emotional songs to Peppy songs such as "Badi Mushkil Hai" "Roshni se" and "Mere Khyaloon Ki Malika" and fun numbers like "Ole Ole", "Tan Tana Tan" and "Jab Tak Rahega Samosa Mein Aloo". Abhijeet has worked with veteran music directors like R.D. Burman, Bappi Lahiri and Laxmikant Pyarelal. Most of his popular songs are composed by Anu Malik, Jatin Lalit, Nadeem Shravan and Anand Milind. Abhijeet also holds the record of singing and recording the longest song of 18 minutes in studio.

Abhijeet has sung duets with many female singers like Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle, Sadhana Sargam, Anuradha Paudwal, Kavita Krishnamurthy, K.S. Chithra, Sunidhi Chauhan Shreya Ghoshal and Akriti Kakar. Abhijeet has sung maximum duets with Alka Yagnik.

Abhijeet is considered by the audience and admirers of both Abhijeet and SRK to be voice of Shah Rukh Khan since they first collaborated in 1994 for the song Badi Mushkil Hai from Anjaam. Abhijeet voiced number of songs of Shah Rukh Khan during the 1990s including Yes Boss, Chalte Chalte, Baadshah and Main Hoon Na. But due to disappointment when the singers name was at the last in end credits of Main Hoon Na and again in Om Shanti Om (2007), they parted ways. Abhijeet last sang for Shah Rukh Khan in the movie Billu Barber (2009) for the song Khudaya Khair which was their last collaboration and the song was not picturized because of Abhijeet's insistence on not to film his version of the song. Therefore, another was created for picturization.

The composer duo Jatin-Lalit have collaborated with Abhijeet on numerous occasions to give him some of his biggest hits such as "Wada Raha Sanam" from Khiladi, "Yeh Teri Aankhen Jhunki Jhunki" from Fareb, "Main Koi Aisa Geet Gaon" and "Chaand Taare" from Yes Boss, "Zaara Sa Jhoom Loon Main" from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, "Aur Kya" from Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani, and "Tauba Tumhare Yeh Ishare" "Suno Na Suno Na" and "Chalte Chalte" from Chalte Chalte.

Non-film music

Abhijeet has recorded non-film pop music. He has composed all of his non film albums himself. He released two albums, Main Deewana Hoon and Tapori No.1. Later he launched Aashiqui. He released a pop album, called Tere Bina. Which Was a Big Hit on that Time. He got MTV Music Asia Award for that Album. "Kabhin Yaadon mein Aaon" is a Hit Song of all time from that album.

On 3 May 2006, he released another non-film album called Lamhe. In 2014, he released his album titled AB consist of Seven Songs, penned by Sameer..He also released Bengali pop albums and Tagore song albums for which he received Sangeet Maha Samman on 13th February 2015. Recently he recorded a new song with June Banerjee at T-Series Studio in September 2016. That will be his Pop song collaboration with T-Series after a Decade. Recently in 2017 January His 90's evergreen Hit song, Which he also Music Composed "Kabhi Yadoon Mein" out with a Remake version sung by Palak Muchhal and Arijit Singh.Starring By Divya Khosla Kumar, who was the actor in the original version sung and composed by Abhijeet. ^[1]

Controversies

On 6 May 2015, when sessions court in Mumbai sentenced actor Salman Khan to five years in jail in connection with the 2002 hit-and-run case, Abhijeet came out in support of Salman by tweeting "Roads are meant for cars and dogs not for people sleeping on them". This raised anger among several Twitter users as well in popular media for allegedly making insensitive remarks as well as opening himself to criticism by members of media or others that Abhijeet is equating homeless people to be the same as dogs.^[2]

In a similar tweet, he said "Kutta rd pe soyega kutte ki maut marega, roads garib ke baap ki nahi hai I ws homles an year nvr slept on rd" (Dogs sleep on the road and die like dogs. Roads are not ancestral properties of poor. I was homeless for a year and never slept on roads). Abhijeet clarified to a news channel "Nobody should die on the roads as dogs". He further stated that the death of the poor man was a loss to his family members and by not sleeping on the roads such deaths can be and should be avoided. He said and so did other people on the same news channel program that sleeping on the roads/pavements is dangerous as the roads are extremely busy. Many members of the public and media want the government to do more to help avoid such preventable incidents. Unfortunately a large number of people sleep overnight on the roads in cities in India due to the lack of means to buy or rent a house while they eke out a living doing menial labor.^[3][4][5][6]

In July 2016, Abhijeet was arrested by the Mumbai police and release later on bail, for allegedly abusing journalist Swati Chaturvedi^[7] online on Twitter. The arrest was at the complaint of Aam Aadmi Party spokesperson Preeti Sharma Menon with Mumbai's BKC Cyber Cell. According to the Indian Express, the FIR for the online abuse was filed on charges of public obscenity and outrage of modesty.^[8]

Abhijeet Bhattacharya's Twitter account (@abhijeetsinger) was suspended on May 23, 2017, after he posted a series of 'offensive tweets', especially against women. ^[9] Sonu Nigam also deleted his account after Abhijeet account was suspended. ^[10][11] On 29th may Abhijeet re-joined Twitter with a new account(@singerabhijeet). But by evening, the new account was also suspended.^[12]

Awards and nominations

Honours

• Uttar Pradesh Gaurav Samman^[13]
• Yash Bharati Samman, 2013
• Sangeet Maha Samman, 2015

Filmfare Awards

Filmfare Best Male Playback Award (Won):

Filmfare Best Male Playback Award (Nominated)

• Screen Award for Best Male Playback in 1997 for "Chand Taare" from Yes Boss
• MTV Award for Best Singer Asia

Notable songs

References

External links

• Abhijeet Bhattacharya on IMDb
• Abhijeet Bhattacharya Rediff