Happy Birthday Shreya Ghoshal!

Today BollyCurry celebrates the birthday of an extremely talented singer who's versatility ranges from having sung popular romantic songs to item numbers to sad songs! Yes, we're talking about none other than the very beautiful and the very talented Shreya Ghoshal.

 

Shreya Ghoshal was born in 1984 to Bishwajit Ghoshal, an electrical engineer, and Soumyadeep Ghoshal, a literature post-graduate. Brought up in a Bengali Brahmin family in West Bengal, she grew up in a small town in Rajasthan. She completed her basic schooling in Rawatbhata and in Mumbai. She has a degree in arts from the SEIS College at Sion, Mumbai.

 

After being trained as a singer and recording albums in Indian regional languages, mainly in Bengali, she participated in Zee TV's Sa Re Ga Ma Pa at the tender age of 14 and won the contest. Through the show, she got the chance to interact with Bollywood's veteran music directors and singers and grabbed Sanjay Leela Bhansali's attention, who later traced her and gave her a chance to be the playback singer for his film Devdas (2002). She shared space in that movie with popular singers like Udit Narayan and Jaspinder Narula. Her song "Bairi Piya", sung at the age of sixteen, was a super-duper hit and her voice was described as innocent from the film director itself! Since then, she has sung mainly for Hindi movies and won four National Film Awards, two Kerala State Awards, a Tamil Nadu State Film Award, eleven Filmfare Awards, eighteen Filmfare South Awards, eleven IIFA Awards, seven Zee Cine Awards, ten Screen Awards, four Apsara Awards and many more! She was also honored in the US for her contribution to Indian Cinema and 26th June was declared as "Shreya Ghoshal Day" by governor Ted Strickland of Ohio.

 

Ghoshal is one of the few singers who has had the chance to work with almost all the major composers in the industry, including as Anu Malik, Bappi Lahiri, Sanjeev Darshan, A.R. Rahman, Pritam Chakraborty, Amit Trivedi, Vishal-Shekhar and Himesh Reshammiya. Since 2011, Ghoshal has been singing in live music concerts all around the world and has been a judge for numerous singing reality TV showings including Star Voice of India - Chhote Ustaad, X Factor India, Josco Indian Voice, Indian Idol Junior Season 1. She was also the captain of Shreya's Superstars in Music Ka Maha Muqqabla; unfortunately, her team lost in the semi-finals.

 

Apart from all her fans around the globe, Ghoshal is also one of the favorite singers of Manna Dey, Palak Muchhal and Javed Ali.

 

On her birthday, below is a mini-list of some of her most loved and memorable songs.

Writer: Alina S.
Editor(s): Shreya S. and Gunia M.
Graphics: Virina R.