Singer Kanika Kapoor's candid revelations on her struggles and success

Picture Courtesy: Official Instagram Account/Kanika Kapoor

JioSaavn Podcasts has launched the third season of Talking Music, a chat show where singers, music directors, composers, and artists from the Indian music industry candidly share unheard stories. From first-hand experiences to personal journeys and what it took to create some of their biggest hits, season three of Talking Music will have ten 30-minute episodes every Thursday, starting November 28, 2019. Kicking off with Kanika Kapoor, this season will have a host of names on the podcast, including Armaan Malik, Shalmali Kholgade, Badshah and many more.

During her chat, Kanika Kapoor spoke about a lot of things, right from her mentors to her overnight fame. She first shed light on the veteran singer, Anup Jalota, who taught her a lot. Talking about her, Kapoor said, "Absolutely love him, he has been a mentor. He has taught me a lot and he is the one from whom I have learned how to perform on the stage."

She also spilled the beans on her connection with star footballer Cesc Fabregas, and how was it when she attended his wedding. "This is the first time I'm talking about this and I feel very embarrassed because I never talk about friends like that. Fabregas and our family are like one family. His wife Daniella is one of my oldest friends, we were school mums when our kids were babies and are closest friends forever and I know him through her and of course he is a very very close friend of mine and because of him I've been introduced to a hell lot of football and footballers," she said.

It was then time to talk about two of the biggest songs of her career that helped her shape her career, Jugni, and Baby Doll. Talking about Jugni, she said, "I was married at that time and wasn't allowed to sing, they were of the thought that I couldn't become a singer. After marriage, I told my husband I wanted to sing and promised I wouldn't do it professionally and just for my own self. So then we found a music producer, nothing materialised with him but what happened during that one year was that I was taking a train every week, travelling to the studio, and I also used to be on YouTube and YT was rather new then."

She added, "I remember taking the virgin train from London to Birmingham, listening to music on YouTube and watching videos and I came across this old song Jugni and though I didn't understand what it meant, I learned everything. I loved it so much; it was on repeat, I must've heard it hundreds of times. One day, I went to the studio and told the arranger that I love this song, can you take my vocals and I'd like to do a remix of this and let's put a little bit of rapping. He looked at me and said no, it's a slower song, how will you sort of work on it? So we made the tempo up and somehow the song came into being and then we didn't really do much about it, it was just kept there."

Kapoor continued, "Then in 2010-11 when I decided that I wanted to start singing post my separation is when I thought that let me just take it out so we made a very cheap green screen video, and then just posted it on YouTube just for fun. I had never thought that this track would hit 25-30 million views in just 3-4 months. It was a huge deal at that point in time because it was organic, not like nowadays that you buy hits every day. Then 6 months later, I got a call from British Asian, they had nominated me for some big award and I won that! It was not something that I had planned, it just happened. I think God wanted to help me."

She then goes on to talk about one of the biggest songs of 2014, Baby Doll, from Ragini MMS 2, and it would be fair to say the song was one of the biggest attractions of the film and helped it immensely in its success. "6 months later, I again got a random call asking me if I was the singer or model of the track Jugni and I said both! That person was from Balaji, she said that Ekta Kapoor really liked my voice and saw my video and would like to offer me a song and want me to sing it in the same style as Jugni, would I be up for that?"

She went on, "I came to Bombay, was here for 4 days. Baby Doll was made in front of me; I sang the song and went back. I didn't really think much about it. The song was supposed to come out in Sept but it didn't and I forgot about it. Suddenly in January, I got a call that it's coming out in February. It didn't hit me at all. The first show that I got to do was with Shahrukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Honey Singh. It was the IPL opening in April in Abu Dhabi, that was my first show ever! I had no confidence to perform in front of people on stage, let alone with all these people, No way!! It took me two years to learn how to sing and perform and become an entertainer. Many shows I did, but in the beginning, I used to mime, I could sing but I couldn't sing in front of people. It was difficult. Now I'm living my dream."

Lastly, she got candid on another chartbuster song, Da Da Dasse, and said," After my track in NH10, Chhil Gaye Naina, I got a call from Amit Ji's (Trivedi) studio that he wants to meet me and I was like- What? Really? How? Why? He said that he heard that song and had a song for me which he didn't want me to sing but act in it, because he thought I acted in the song, Chhil Gaye Naina. He said he could hear pain and fear in that song and the same thing he wanted me to do with Da Da Dasse," she ends.

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