page_title: Udit Narayan
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Udit Narayan / Career
caption_attribution_description: Singers at the formation of Indian Singer's Rights Association (ISRA) for royalties. Kailash Kher, Sonu Nigam, Soumya Rao, Javed Ali, Shaan, Udit Narayan, Manhar Udhas, Kunal Ganjawala, Abhijeet Bhattacharya, Hariharan, Mahalaxmi Iyer, Mohammad Aziz, Pankaj Udhas, Alka Yagnik, Sanjay Tandon, Chitra Singh, Suresh Wadkar, Mitali Singh
context_page_description: Udit Narayan is an Indian playback singer whose songs have been featured mainly in Bollywood movies of Hindi language. He has also sung in various other languages including Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Odia, Nepali, Bhojpuri, Bengali. He has won 4 National Film Awards and 5 Filmfare Awards with 20 nominations among many others. He had to struggle a lot even after his debut in 1980 in Bollywood playback. He got to sing with legends Mohammed Rafi in his Bollywood Playback debut in movie Unees-Bees in 1980 and also with Kishore Kumar in the 1980s. He finally made his mark in 1988 movie Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak starring Aamir Khan and Juhi Chawla, his song "Papa Kehte Hain" was his notable performance which earned him his first Filmfare Award in the 1980s and he established himself in Bollywood Playback Singing. He is the only male singer in the history of the Filmfare Awards to have won in over three decades.
  After the success of the movie Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak in 1988 which turned out to be All Time Blockbuster movie in Bollywood with more than 8 million sales of the sound track became one of the highest selling albums in the 1980s.
context_section_description: Narayan is one of the most prominent singers of Bollywood throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. He has been the on-screen singing voice for various Bollywood stars. He has sung for Bollywood actors Amitabh Bachchan, Rajesh Khanna, Dev Anand, Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn. Most of his duets are with Alka Yagnik. He began his career in 1970 as a Maithili folk singer (staff artist) for Radio Nepal, singing mostly popular folk songs in Maithili and Nepali. Gradually, he started singing modern Nepali songs. After eight years, Narayan moved to Bombay on a musical scholarship for Nepalese from the Indian Embassy in Nepal to study classical music at Bhartiya Vidya Bhavan.
  Narayan started his Bollywood career in 1980 when he was noted by music director Rajesh Roshan, who asked Narayan to playback sing for the Hindi film Unees-Bees. Narayan was given the opportunity to sing with the singer Mohammed Rafi. He sang for Devanand a couplet in Swami Dada.His first duet was in the film Sannata.  Soon after, Narayan sang for a number of other movies, including Bade Dil Wala in 1983, where he sang a duet with senior singer Lata Mangeshkar, composed by senior music director R. D. Burman. In the same year, Narayan sang with Kishore Kumar in the film Kehdo Pyar Hai. Another singer he sang with was Suresh Wadkar with music composed by Bappi Lahiri.  A significant milestone in his career occurred in 1988 when Anand-Milind gave him the opportunity to sing all the songs for the successful Bollywood movie Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, with Alka Yagnik, which earned him a Filmfare Award. In an interview with The Times of India, Narayan said: "The song I've sung, "Manzilein", is the best song of my career after "Pehla Nasha", which gave me superstardom!". Narayan remained prolific through the 2000s, singing popular numbers in films such as Pukar, Dhadkan, Lagaan, Devdas and Veer-Zaara
  In 2002, Narayan sang "Bairi Piya" with newcomer Shreya Ghoshal, from the film Devdas, of which Rediff mentioned: "Narayan successfully captures the eternal romanticism of Devdas". In 2014, Narayan sang a song titled "Naa Hum Jo Kah De" along with Shreya Ghoshal, for the album Women's Day Special: Spreading Melodies Everywhere. The song was composed by Ram Shankar and penned by A. K. Mishra.
  Although he was leading playback singer in the 1990s but had to compete with his closest professional rival Kumar Sanu as he won back to back 5 Filmfares in the 1990s.
caption: Udit Narayan with Bollywood playback singers
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