Director-music composer Vishal Bhardwaj, who is awaiting the release of his upcoming film ‘Khufiya’, has shared an interesting anecdote from the pages of history.
Vishal shared about the first time when he heard the voice of India’s superstar singer Arijit Singh.
The first song of his that Vishal heard was incidentally a scratch track of ‘Phir Le Aaya Dil’ from ‘Barfi’ that Arijit had recorded for music director Pritam to be used as a reference track for Vishal’s wife Rekha Bhardwaj.
Before he broke out at the national scale, Arijit used to assist Pritam in music recordings and programming.
The track came to Rekha from Pritam but on hearing Arijit’s voice, she was blown away and sought Pritam’s permission to make her husband listen to Arijit’s voice.
Recollecting the same, Vishal said: “For the music recording of Anurag Basu’s ‘Barfi’, Arijit had sung the scratch for the beautiful song ‘Phir Le Aaya Dil’ and sent the song to Rekha for recording it. He used to work with Pritam at that time. Rekha was so impressed with his song that she took Pritam’s permission to make me hear the song.”
The music composer further mentioned: “Rekha and I became fans of his voice from then on. And Rekha also spoke to Anurag to keep the Arijit version in the film because it was so gorgeous. Initially, only Rekha’s version was to be a part of the film. Rekha and I love Arijit’s voice and have seen him evolve beautifully.”
The music of ‘Khufiya’ was dropped recently by VB music label on their YouTube channel, and music connoisseurs have been raving about the song ‘Dil Dushman’ which has been sung in two different versions by Arijit and Sunidhi Chauhan.
Vishal describing the song, said: ” ‘Dil Dushman’ is the film’s backbone musically. Two versions in the album carry different energies and show the change in the film’s emotion graph. I wanted a powerful voice for one, so I asked Arijit to sing it, and the other version needed to be haunting and melodious, which Sunidhi had sung. Both of them have taken the music to another level, and every time I hear the songs, I am amazed at their talent.”
‘Dil Dushman’ has been composed by Vishal, with lyrics written by Gulzar.
Describing his equation with Sunidhi, Vishal said: “I have known Sunidhi since she was 14 when she used to sing the scratch for lata ji for my songs. She has evolved and continues to evolve as an artist amazingly. Recently, I performed with her for the first time during the launch of the Khufiya album, where she sang the Dil Dushhman track and turned it into a rock version. That’s how talented she is.”
The film, directed by Vishal, is set to stream on Netflix from October 5.