Overview
The term "Indipop" was first used by the British-Indian fusion band band Monsoon in their 1981 EP release on Steve Coe's Indipop Records. Pop music began gaining popularity across the Indian subcontinent with Pakistani singers Nazia Hassan and Zohaib, forming a sibling duo whose records, produced by the Indian Biddu, sold as many as 60 million copies. Indian popular music was further popularized in the early 1990s with grass-root efforts made by Alisha Chinai, whose albums were also produced by Biddu, and MTV India. Since then, it was Shashi Gopal who pioneered the spectacular growth of this genre by producing, marketing and launching some of the biggest brands (e.g. Magnasound) in the Indian pop scene.
Much of Indian Pop music comes from the Indian Film Industry, and until the 1990s, only a few singers like Remo Fernandes, Usha Uthup, Asha Bhosle, Sharon Prabhakar and Peenaz Masani were popular outside of the film industry. Since then, pop singers in the latter group have included Baba Sehgal, Alisha Chinai, Shantanu Mukherjee aka Shaan, Sunali Rathod, Palash Sen, KK, Sagarika, Colonial Cousins (Hariharan, Leslie Lewis), Lucky Ali, and Sonu Nigam, and music composers like Jawahar Wattal, who made top selling albums with, Daler Mehndi, Shubha Mudgal, Baba Sehgal, Shweta Shetty and Hans Raj Hans. Another notable Indian pop musician is Charanjit Singh, whose 1982 album Synthesizing: Ten Ragas to a Disco Beat anticipated the sound of acid house music.
Besides those listed above, popular Indi-Pop singers include Papon, Zubeen Garg, Daler Mehndi, Raghav Sachar, Rageshwari, Devika Chawla, Bombay Vikings, Sunidhi Chauhan, Falguni Pathak, Anushka Manchanda, Bombay Rockers, Anu Malik, Jazzy B, Malkit Singh, Hans Raj Hans, Raghav, Jay Sean, Juggy D, Rishi Rich, Sheila Chandra, Bally Sagoo, Punjabi MC, Bhangra Knights, Mehnaz, Sanober, White Revoluteries and SQS Supastars. Also, Indian music composer and singer Himesh Reshammiya gave a new face to high pitch pop singing through his debut album Aap Kaa Surroor (2006) which had unprecedented success in Indian music album sales.
Recently, Indian pop has taken an interesting turn with the "remixing" of old Indian movie songs, new beats being added to them.
Read more about this topic: Indian Pop