Lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya, who has shaped the contours of film music with his pen in addition to legends like Gulzar, Javed Akhtar and Sahir Ludhianvi, has shared an interesting anecdote about his journey into becoming a lyricist.
Lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya, who has shaped the contours of film music with his pen in addition to legends like Gulzar, Javed Akhtar and Sahir Ludhianvi, has shared an interesting anecdote about his journey into becoming a lyricist.
Bhattacharya came to Mumbai in the late 1990s to become a singer. However, destiny had other plans for him. While he didn’t find much success as a singer, he changed the tides of film music with his lyrics. But, he was initially quite reluctant to step into writing the lyrics of the songs.
The lyricist recently appeared on The Music Podcast and shared that it was music composer Amit Trivedi, who persuaded him to give his real name for the credit of lyricist in the cult-classic album ‘Dev.D’.
Amitabh Bhattacharya said on ‘The Music Podcast’, “It was Amit Trivedi, who acted as the catalyst to my journey as a lyricist. I had written scratch songs for ‘Dev.D’ to help the film’s team understand the melodies. But, those lyrics were written as per the brief and they eventually got locked. I told Amit that I didn’t want to get the credit as a lyricist because that would affect my playback singing career.”
He further mentioned, “We had long discussions around this and one day Amit got so frustrated that he practically grabbed me by the collar and said, ‘I don’t know if you will get songs to lend your voice to or you will become a singer but, this is something that you’re really good at, and people love you for your lyrics. I don’t care, you have to take the credit for the lyrics that you have written. It’s your labour.”
