Shreya Ghoshal born on 12 March 1984 is an Indian singer. While she is best known for being a playback singer in Bollywood films, she has also performed several songs for other Indian film industries. Besides Hindi, she has sung songs in Assamese, Bengali, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu.
Ghoshal's career began when she won the Sa Re Ga Ma Pa contest as an adult. Her Bollywood playback singing career began with Devdas, for which she received both the Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer and the Filmfare RD Burman Award for New Music Talent. Since then, she has worked in over 140 films. She has worked with many prominent Indian musicians, and several of her songs have achieved critical and commercial success. Ghoshal is one of the most awarded playback singers in recent times, with 4 National Film Awards and 5 Filmfare Awards to her credit.
Ghoshal was born to Bengali Hindu brahmin family in Durgapur, West Bengal and grew up in Rawatbhata, a small town near Kota, Rajasthan. She belongs to a highly academic family. Her father works in Bhabha Atomic Research Center as a nuclear power plant engineer for the Nuclear Power Corporation of India while her mother is a post-graduate literature student.
From the age of four Ghoshal accompanied her mother on the harmonium. Her parents enrolled her for formal training in Hindustani classical music in Kota with Maheshchandra Sharma.[1]
As a child she won the children's special episode of the Sa Re Ga Ma (now Sa Re Ga Ma Pa) contest on Zee TV. Kalyanji who also judged the competition, convinced her parents to move to Mumbai.[2] She trained with him for 18 months and continued her classical music training with Mukta Bhide in Mumbai.[1]
She studied at Atomic Energy Central Schools (AECS) at Rawatbhata and Anushaktinagar (Mumbai). For Graduation she had enrolled herself at SIES College in their Arts Stream
Ghoshal caught the attention of film director Sanjay Leela Bhansali when she participated in Sa Re Ga Ma Pa for a second time, this time competing as an adult. In 2000, he offered her the opportunity to be the voice of Paro, the lead female character of his film Devdas, who was portrayed by Aishwarya Rai. Shreya sang five songs under the music direction of Ismail Darbar in the film. This song earned her the Filmfare Award for Best Female Playback Singer, as well as Filmfare's RD Burman Award for New Music Talent, given to upcoming talents in music. She also won a National Film Award for the song "Bairi Piya".
Since Devdas, she went on to sing for many other actresses under the baton of various music directors, including A.R.Rahman, Anu Malik, Himesh Reshammiya, Mani Sharma, M. M. Keeravani, Nadeem-Shravan, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, Pritam, Vishal-Shekhar, Hamsalekha, Mano Murthy, Gurukiran, Ilayaraja,Harikrishna, Yuvan Shankar Raja and Harris Jayaraj. She has won many awards both in north and south film industries. Moviegoers from across the world heard Ghoshal’s singing voice pictured on Aishwarya Rai, and in coming years she quickly became one of the top female playback singers in Bollywood, alongside Alka Yagnik, Sunidhi Chauhan, Sadhana Sargam and Kavita Krishnamurthy.
She enjoys Symphony and instrumental in western music and her favourite group is ABBA. But Indian music according to what she says, her soul. She won three more Filmfare Awards for her performance in Pritam's song "Teri Ore" from Singh is Kinng. She is only singer to get 4 national awards at the age of 26 in the Hindi film industry..
