There’s no denying that Sonu Nigam has never been too shy about his opinions. The guy actually shaved his head off last year after being threatened by a maulvi for his comments about morning azaans. He even called a press conference to document his act of ‘defiance’.
But, his latest tirade against his peers from across the borders is a little too politically incorrect to overlook with a simple eye-roll. It is a tad xenophobic, not to mention, possibly factually incorrect.
At the Agenda Aaj Tak summit, he said, “Sometimes, I feel as if it would have been better if I were from Pakistan. At least I would get offers from India.”
Now, it is a known fact that he hasn’t been happy with the music scene in the Bollywood because… you know, he keeps ranting about it. We do empathise with him, most of the times. After all, he was ruling the roost ever since Pardes happened to him (and to all of us) in 1997. He dethroned Udit Narayan and Abhijeet Bhattacharya as the voice of Shah Rukh Khan, one of the most formidable forces of histrionics in Bollywood, who was at the peak of his career then. Nigam belted out one hit after another – from ‘Yeh Dil Deewana’ to ‘Kal Ho Naa Ho’ – and we swayed in glee. But, like most artists in Bollywood, his time is now is over and he needs to gracefully accept it.
Even Shaan, another 90s heartthrob, has expressed his dismay about how the game has changed in Bollywood. But, unlike Nigam, he made a valid point about how people tend to be more easily impressed with singers who have social media (and real life) swag over anything else. Nigam also added an interesting bit of info, which if true is indeed sad, we’ve been unable to verify as of now.
He said, “Nowadays, singers have to pay music companies for shows. If we don’t shell out the money, they will play songs sung by other singers and highlight them. Then, they will take money from them. Why single out Indian singers? They don’t do the same with Pakistani singers. Atif Aslam is a very close friend of mine. He is never asked to pay to sing at shows, neither is Rahat Fateh Ali Khan.”
So, we did a little bit of digging to find out how many films the currently popular singers of Bollywood have done from 2016 till present. We only took note of the Hindi films they sang in, starting with the number of hit songs, till we had to take a step back and halt when we came to Arijit Singh, the inevitable titan of the music scene right now. And you know, he isn’t from Pakistan. We are gonna go out on a limb here and say that he is not asked to pay music companies to perform at shows because he is in his heydays right now, just like Nigam was in the 90s and 00s.
No honestly, Singh emerged as the clear winner with 89 films in the last two years, as opposed to only 20 that Atif Aslam, one of Pakistan’s most prolific imports to Bollywood, has sung for, in the past two years. As opposed to Aslam’s 20 in two years, Singh had a whopping 37 in 2016 alone! Even though Singh has been facing a (temporary) ban from Salman Khan, the big bad bully of Bollywood, for an innocuous transgression on Singh’s part, the number of hits he has belted out in the last two years surpasses the number of films Aslam has sung for.
We created a handy infographic with 10 popular singers – five from India and five from Pakistan – to judge the veracity of Nigam’s claims. Here it is:
You’re welcome!
