Alka Yagnik

Long before she had a career, Alka Yagnik had a religion: Lata Mangeshkar's voice, playing on the radio in the Kolkata house where Yagnik grew up. "When girls played with dolls, I'd be stuck to the radio," she told Filmfare. "I'd imitate Lata didi. I've learnt by just listening to her. She's my guru." The debt outlasted her stage fright and her early career — one journalist later called her "a self-declared Lata bhakt" who copied the elder singer's styling, clothes and mannerisms — and composers eventually began writing songs that leaned on the resemblance rather than around it.

listen: upstream & heresource: Filmfare — "A lot of songs were taken away from me – Alka Yagnik" (Lata Mangeshkar as guru, Asha Bhosle-era context, career milestones) ↗share

1960

Ajeeb Dastan HaiLata Mangeshkar

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1998

Gali Mein Aaj Chand NiklaAlka Yagnik

listen forYagnik named "Ajeeb Dastan Hai," from 1960's Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai, as one of her two favorite Mangeshkar songs growing up — listen for the plain, straight-toned delivery, the melody carried with almost no ornament. Decades later, composer M.M. Keeravani wrote "Gali Mein Aaj Chand Nikla," for 1998's Zakhm, with Mangeshkar's exact vocal pitch in mind, then cast Yagnik because, in his words, she "came closest to coveying [sic] that vocal pitch" — the clearest evidence anyone in the industry heard the same resemblance Yagnik had been chasing since childhood.

Alka Yagnik names Kishore Kumar in the same breath as Lata Mangeshkar as her earliest listening influence: "I am a great fan of Lataji and Kishore Kumar since I was five," she told DNA India. What she took from him wasn't purity but "masti" — she has called him "a powerhouse of energy with a lot of masti and romance in his voice," someone who could sing, act, direct and clown and be equally convincing at each. She got to test the resemblance directly, recording several duets alongside him early in her career, before he died in 1987.

listen: upstream & heresource: DNA India — "Musical notes with Alka Yagnik" (Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar as childhood influences) ↗share

1969

Roop Tera MastanaKishore Kumar

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1988

Ek Do TeenAlka Yagnik

listen forPlay Kishore Kumar's "Roop Tera Mastana," from 1969's Aradhana, and listen for the loose, grinning momentum in his phrasing — nothing about it sounds like effort. Yagnik's "Ek Do Teen," her breakout from Tezaab two decades later, chases the same feeling: a bright, bouncing top line that never tightens up even as the tempo climbs, the "masti" she named in him rebuilt for a dance floor instead of a bedroom ballad.

Alka Yagnik never claims she studied Asha Bhosle the way she studied Lata Mangeshkar; the two, in her telling, were simply the two who were "ruling" when she arrived. "Newcomers were not easily accepted," she told Filmfare, "but I was fortunate to find my niche." Critics filled in what she left unsaid. When "Ek Do Teen" turned Yagnik into a dance-floor sensation in 1988, Rolling Stone India wrote that it handed her a title "squarely anointed to Asha Bhosle until then" — the up-tempo, playful register Bhosle had defined for two decades before Yagnik inherited it.

listen: upstream & heresource: Filmfare — "A lot of songs were taken away from me – Alka Yagnik" (Lata Mangeshkar as guru, Asha Bhosle-era context, career milestones) ↗share

1981

In Aankhon Ki MastiAsha Bhosle

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2006

SalaamAlka Yagnik

listen forAsha Bhosle's "In Aankhon Ki Masti," from the original 1981 Umrao Jaan, is the film's signature mujra number — Bhosle's voice carrying the courtesan's practiced allure through a slow, ornamented ghazal melody. In the 2006 remake of the same story, Yagnik sings "Salaam," a qawwali written for the same character in the same kind of performance-within-the-film scene. Rolling Stone India called Yagnik's version an unbidden "tribute" to Bhosle; heard side by side, the two recordings are doing the identical job a quarter-century apart.