Biography:

Sonu Nigam (born 30 July 1973) is an Indian singer whose songs have been featured mainly in Hindi and Kannada movies. He has also sung many songs in other languages including Oriya, Tamil, Assamese, Punjabi, Bengali, Malayalam, Marathi, Telugu and Nepali movies. He has released Indian pop albums and acted in a few movies. He had changed the spelling of his last name from 'Nigam' to 'Niigaam' in accordance with numerology, but later reverted to the original spelling.

Personal Life

Sonu Nigam was born at Faridabad in a Kayastha family. He began his singing career at the age of 3, When he joined his father Agam Kumar Nigam on stage to sing Mohammed Rafi's song "Kya Hua Tera Vaada, Wo Kasam Wo Irada". From then on, Sonu accompanied his father on his singing appearances at weddings and parties. In his teenage years, he successfully participated in music. He moved to Mumbai with his father to begin his Bollywood singing career at the age of 19. He was trained by classical singer Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan.

Professional Career

Playback Singing

His initial years in Mumbai proved to be a struggle, beginning by singing covers of Mohammed Rafi songs, mainly for a number of "Rafi Ki Yaadein" albums released by T-Series. T-Series promoter Gulshan Kumar gave him a chance to reach a larger audience. In these years Nigam's singing style was regarded by some to be a "Rafi clone". Nigam's first movie song as a playback singer was for Janam (1990), which was never officially released. He then began making radio commercials.

Nigam started hosting the popular TV show, Sa Re Ga Ma, in 1995 with the first episode airing on 1 May. The singing talent competition soon became one of the most popular shows on Indian television. Soon after, he sang "Accha Sila Diya" for the film Bewafa Sanam (1995). His first major success was with the Anu Malik-composed song "Sandese Aate Hai" in Border (1997). Sonu's image as a 'Rafi clone' changed after his rendition of the Nadeem-Shravan-composed song "Yeh Dil Deewana" in Pardes in the same year. Sonu's Album "Deewana", with music directed by Sajid-Wajid, was released by T-Series in 1999, revealing his talent for singing romantic songs and it remains one of India's most successful albums. Since then, he has created a unique style of his own and has become a role model for emerging vocal talent in India.

Over the years, Nigam became a major force in the Indian music industry. He provided playback singing for Hindi movies and won many awards, notably the title song of the film Kal Ho Naa Ho. He recorded romantic, rock, sad and patriotic songs. Nigam sang in many languages besides Hindi, including Kannada, Assamese, Bengali, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, English, Bhojpuri, Urdu, Nepali, Chhattisgarhi, Malayalam and Marathi.

With a career spanning over two decades, Nigam has recorded his voice for almost all top-rated music directors of India including A. R. Rahman, Ilayaraja, Anu Malik, Pritam, Jatin-Lalit, Nadeem Shravan, Mano Murthy, Vishal Shekar, Sanjeev Darshan, Aadesh Shrivastav, Anand Milind, Sajid-Wajid, V. Harikrishna, G. V. Prakash Kumar, Mani Sharma among others.

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