Here’s how Kunaal Sodhi became Oye Kunaal

MUMBAI: Even before you get down to hear, and eventually love, his music, it is singer-composer Oye Kunaal’s name which fascinates you! Originally known as Kunaal Sodhi, the artist, who is known for his numbers Aaj Tera Mera Saath Hai, Hanjua Di Tha, Shukar Kar, Waqt, Yaad Teri Ayi, and Patola, added an ‘Oye’ to it, a year back.

“My friend circle consists of people older than me, they are all reputed people. Whenever we had to go anywhere, they would be like ‘Oye Kunaal’ and follow it with whatever they wanted to say, like 'Oye Kunaal, when did you come?'. This appealed to me. This was when I added an ‘Oye’ to my name. And everyone has asked me about it. Whatever work I have done, I have used this name. People have accepted this name well,” he says.

Kunaal’s last music video was Hanjua Di Tha, with T-series. “We shot it in Goa. I have another song coming called Uss Gali. I have featured in it and it has my music as well. It will release this month,” he says.

With quite a good number of songs to his credit, he also shared that though he was passionate about singing, music production was never on his mind.

"As a child, I always wanted to become a singer. And when I entered Dayanand Model School, Jalandhar, it was quite famous for Youth Festivals, so that gave me a push. We had a good music scene there. Later a friend of mine gave me a software for music. I did not bother opening it for a couple of months, but then I started investing my time in learning the know-how and the technicalities and made a song. I uploaded Hanjua Di Tha song on a website and got a good response for it. In fact, the song got over a million downloads, so that's how I got into music production. As I mentioned earlier, the song has been made into a music video by T-Series recently," he says.

"I am not a trained singer, and whatever I have learned it is on my own. But I would like to mention that Yo Yo Honey Singh is my favourite singer and he is also my inspiration," he adds.

Ask him if acting is on the charts, and he says, “The company that I am associated with HSR Entertainment, owned by Rishabh Puri, is training us first and then they will think about acting. Right now, they are making music videos to make an identity for me so that people know who I am. We will soon be shooting a music video for a song of mine for the album ANTIDOTE. The song is also called ANTIDOTE and we made it during the lockdown. It got viral on TikTok as well.”