Filmfare Award for Best Male Playback Singer
The Filmfare Best Male Playback Singer Award is given by Indian film magazine "Filmfare" as a part of its annual Filmfare Awards for Hindi films, to recognise a male playback singer who has delivered an outstanding performance in a film song. Although the Filmfare Awards started in 1954, awards for the best playback singer category started in 1959. From inception of the category through 1967, both the female and male singers used to compete for a single award, after which separate categories were created for female and male singers respectively. Superlatives. Kishore Kumar  won the award the maximum number of times 8 in this category, whereas Mohammad Rafi & Arijit Singh won it 6 times each. Kumar Sanu & Udit Narayan have won the award 5 times each. Mukesh has won this award four times. Mahendra Kapoor has won it thrice. Mohammad Rafi dominated the 60's with 5 wins. Kishore Kumar, Mukesh had the highest win during 70's winning the award 3 times each. Kishore Kumar continued domination during 80's with 5 wins. Kumar Sanu with most 5 consecutive wins from 1990 to 1995. Udit Narayan, Sonu Nigam and Shaan sharing 2  awards among each other in 2000s. Arijit Singh dominated 2010's with 6 wins among them 5 consecutive wins from 2016 to 2020. Kishore Kumar has the most nomination (28) followed by Mohammad Rafi (21) and Udit Narayan (20). Sonu Nigam (17), Arijit Singh (16), Mukesh (14) & Kumar Sanu (14) are among others. Udit Narayan holds a unique record of receiving nominations in this category in 3 different decades ( 1980s, 1990s and 2000s ) and getting award in all 3 different decades also the only singer of different origin (Nepali) to win 5 times till date. Arijit Singh (2016-2020) & Kumar  Sanu (1991-1995) holds the record for most consecutive wins, five times in a row. Coincidentally, the songs for which Kumar Sanu won the awards, their music also won the Filmfare Award for Best Music Director. Kishore Kumar won the award four times in a row from 1983 to 1986. Mukesh is the only playback singer who won this award posthumously (1977). Himesh Reshammiya became the first music director to win this award in 2006. Two singers have achieved the feat of receiving all the nominations of this category in a particular year: Mohammed Rafi was the single nominee in  1969, having all the three nominations to his credit, while Kishore Kumar was the single nominee in 1985, having all the four nominations to his credit. Incidentally, Kishore Kumar's all nominated songs were from a single movie, "Sharaabi".