The list of the most-selling female artists in India includes names who have become famous among their audience due to extensive popularity and widespread influence. These artists, owing to their unique voices, the length of their careers, and their expertise in various areas of music, hold significant positions in the streams of Indian music.
Female Artists Of All Time In India
India has a rich heritage of female artists who have made significant contributions to various genres of music, from classical to contemporary pop and everything in between. Here’s a list of some of the most influential and celebrated female artists of all time in India:
1- Lata Mangeshkar:
Lata Mangeshkar is a prominent voice in the history of Indian music. She has captivated people’s hearts with her melodious voice. Her magical training and wonderful singing have earned her a high position in the Indian music industry.
Lata Mangeshkar (September 28, 1929 – February 6, 2022) was India’s most popular and respected singer, with a career spanning six decades filled with achievements. Although Lata has sung in nearly more than thirty languages, her identity has remained as a playback singer in cinema. She has made the biggest contribution to film singing with her sister Asha Bhosle.
Lata Ji’s magical voice has fans not only in the Indian subcontinent but also around the world. Time magazine has acknowledged her as an inevitable and an unifying empress of Indian playback singing. The Indian government honored her with the ‘Bharat Ratna‘.
She passed away due to COVID-related complications on Sunday, 6th February 2022, Magha Shukla Paksha Panchami Tithi, Vikram Samvat 2078 (Panchak), at Breach Candy Hospital in Mumbai. She had been ill for some time. Her great singing and melodious voice have admirers all over the world. Affectionately, everyone called her ‘Lata Didi’. In the year 2001, she was honored with the Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian award.
2- Asha Bhosle:
Asha Bhosle is a legendary figure and lyricist in Indian music. Her melodious voice and extensive singing prowess have earned her a high place and she has made her own identity in the world of music.
Asha Bhosle was born on September 8, 1933, in Sangli district of Maharashtra in a Marathi family. Her father, Dinanath Mangeshkar, was a famous singer and actor, who imparted classical music training to Asha Ji at a very young age. When Asha Ji was only 9 years old, her father passed away. After her father’s demise, her family moved from Pune to Kolhapur and then to Mumbai. For the family’s support, Asha and her elder sister Lata Mangeshkar started singing and acting in films. In 1943, she sang her first Marathi film ‘Majha Bal’. The song ‘Chala Chala Nav Bala…’ was composed by Datta Davjekar. In 1948, she sang the song ‘Saawan Aaya…’ for the Hindi film ‘Chunariya’. Asha Ji gained fame as a singer in South Asia. Asha Ji’s songs encompass film music, pop, ghazals, bhajans, Indian classical music, regional songs, qawwalis, Rabindra Sangeet, and Nazrul geeti. She has sung songs in more than 14 languages such as Marathi, Assamese, Hindi, Urdu, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, Tamil, English, Russian, Jaich, Nepali, Malay, and Malayalam. Asha Ji has lent her voice to more than 12,000 songs. The great singer Kishore Kumar was Asha Ji’s favorite singer.
3- Anuradha Paudwal:
Anuradha Paudwal is an excellent singer known for her magnificent vocals. She has lent her voice to many popular songs in Bollywood and Hindi cinema.
Dr. Anuradha Paudwal (born October 27, 1954) is a prominent playback singer in Hindi cinema. She was extremely popular in the 1990s.
She began her film career with the movie Abhimaan, in which she sang a shloka for Jaya Bhaduri. This shloka was sung under the direction of music composer Sachin Dev Burman. After that, she sang with Mukesh and Mahendra Kapoor in the film Bhagwan Samaye Sansar Mein directed by her husband, music composer Arun Paudwal.
Anuradha Paudwal was born on October 27, 1954, in Karwar, Uttar Kannada district, Karnataka, into a Konkani family. However, she was brought up in Mumbai. She was married to Arun Paudwal, who was the assistant of the famous music composer S.D. Burman. Arun himself was a music composer. In the 1990s, Anuradha Paudwal was at the peak of her career. At the same time, her husband Arun died in an accident. They have a son Aditya Paudwal and a daughter Kavita Paudwal.
Anuradha started her career with the film Abhimaan in 1973, in which she sang a shloka. At one time, almost every film had a song by Anuradha. But for a long time, she has been away from singing. The last time she sang was in the movie Jaane Hoga Kya in 2006. Anuradha never received formal training in classical music, saying that she tried several times but it didn’t work out. She listened to Lataji and practiced for hours to make her voice. For Anuradha Paudwal, Lata Mangeshkar is no less than a goddess because she attributes all her success to Lataji.
Anuradha had a good rapport with other music composers (Rajesh Roshan, Jatin-Lalit, Kalyanji Anandji). After the success of the songs of the film Hero, Anuradha gained popularity and began to be counted among the top singers. In this film, she formed a duo with Laxmikant-Pyarelal. After the success of Hero, this duo gave successful songs in many other films such as Meri Jung, Batwara, Ram Lakhan, and finally Tezaab. After that, she teamed up with Gulshan Kumar of T-Series and brought many new faces into Bollywood. Some of them are Udit Narayan, Sonu Nigam, Kumar Sanu, Abhijeet, Anu Malik, and Nadeem Shravan.
After reaching the peak of her success, she announced that she would only work with T-Series, which benefited Alka Yagnik. Anuradha Paudwal shifted her focus from films to devotional songs and sang many successful hymns in this field. After working for some time, she took a break and returned to devotional singing after 5 years. However, her return was not very successful.
The mountain of sorrows broke on her on September 12, 2020, when her son Aditya Paudwal, due to kidney disease, passed away at the age of only 35 years.
4- Shreya Ghoshal:
Shreya Ghoshal is a young and talented singer who has won hearts with her voice. She has earned credibility and praise with her singing prowess.
Shreya Ghoshal was born into a Bengali family. She was brought up in Rawatbhata, a small town near Kota, Rajasthan. She comes from a highly educated family. Her father works as an engineer at the Nuclear Power Plant for the Indian Nuclear Energy Corporation, while her mother is a postgraduate student of literature.
Since the age of four, Ghoshal accompanied her mother on harmonium. Her parents sent her to Maheshchandra Sharma in Kota for formal training in Hindustani classical music.
As a child, she won the children’s special episode of Sa Re Ga Ma (now Sa Re Ga Ma Pa) on Zee TV. At that time, the famous singer Sonu Nigam hosted the program. Kalyanji, who was the judge of the competition, persuaded her parents to come to Mumbai. She received training from him for 18 months and continued her education in classical music from Mumbai’s Free Bhavan.
She studied at the Atomic Energy Central School (AECS) in Rawatbhata and Anushaktinagar (Mumbai). She enrolled in the Arts faculty of SIES College for her Bachelor’s degree.
5- Sona Mohapatra:
Sona Mohapatra is an amazing singer, renowned for her extensive musical talent. She has attracted people from various communities through her singing and has established a unique identity.
Sona Mohapatra is an Indian lyricist, composer, and singer born in Cuttack, Odisha. She is primarily known in India. Sona has performed at numerous music festivals around the world and has been featured in albums, singles, concert webcasts, music videos, Bollywood films, and advertisements. In addition to her own content, Sona Mohapatra has especially been successful with remixes of songs like “Khauf ke Saye,” “Chalo Dance,” and others by artists like INXS and David Bowie.
