Alka Yagnik says she sang some ‘double meaning songs’ without understanding the lyrics, friends told her, ‘Are you mad?’

Alka Yagnik spoke about the time when Hindi film music was undergoing a 'horrible' phase dominated by 'double meaning songs'.

By: Entertainment Desk

New Delhi | April 8, 2023 05:49 PM IST

3 min read

Alka Yagnik is one of the most prolific and prominent playback singers of Bollywood. (Photo: Alka Yagnik/Instagram)

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Alka Yagnik has sung some of the most popular romantic tracks of the 1990s, but she also ended up singing some “double meaning songs” whose lyrics she didn’t immediately understand. Alka, in a recent chat with Radio Nasha, shared that there was a “horrible” phase in Hindi film music, where scores of “double meaning songs” were composed. “Believe it or not, I sang so many of those songs without understanding what I’m singing. Call me silly or whatever (laughs). There were so many songs that I used to sing. I would say it was such a nice song, I would tell my friends about it and they would say ‘Are you mad? Are you not getting it? It is a double meaning song’,” she recalled.

The National Film Award winning singer said that she became “very suspicious” after falling for it on several occasions. “After this, when I was presented with new songs, I used to be very particular about the lyrics. I would say that send me the lyrics first, I will check them and then I will sing. Sometimes, the song would be perfectly fine, and I used to still feel that something was off,” she recalled.

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Alka also spoke about her famous song ‘Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai’ and acknowledged that while it was a “naughty” song, it was handled with care. She shared that since Anand Bakshi, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, Subhash Ghai and Madhuri Dixit were associated with the song, it would be presented in an aesthetic manner. She recalled that until the day of the recording, she didn’t even know the opening lyrics of the song because they were to be sung by Ila Arun.

“Ila ji and I did not rehearse together. I was called one day before. My lines were ‘Choli mein dil hai mera, chunri mein dil hai mera…‘ I didn’t even know ‘Choli ke peeche kya hai’. Until I met Ila ji, I didn’t know the first line of the song and by the time I came to know, it made perfect sense,” she said.

The Khalnayak song also created a lot of controversy at the time because of its lyrics.

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