Singer Lucky Ali has been navigating the industry for over two decades now and has several successful Bollywood tracks to his credit. Though his roots trace back to a filmy family, he stays disconnected from the regular mechanism of the showbiz or the number game of music business. Having seen many ups and downs, Ali has made peace with some bitter chapters of his past.
“Fortunately, I would say that in my situation, whatever I went through was like a lesson for me,” says Ali, who has always been vocal about not receiving royalties for his songs, some of which have become classics now.
“I didn’t really follow it up (as well). Because there are (other) things to do than to follow up things on that front, if you understand what I mean. Of course, it does hurt you in a sense that you worked on it,” he adds.
Instead, the singer, who likes his music to do much of the talking, looks at the brighter side and the “larger picture”, which is the love that he continues to get.
“The love, the respect and the honour… You can’t buy these things and no amount of royalties or likes can buy that. So, there are great values that I gained from the very material losses that I might have gone through,” says the 62-year-old.
Back in 1996, Ali, son of legendary actor-comedian Mehmood and the nephew of Meena Kumari, took the pop route to enter the industry with the release of album, Sunoh. Since then, he has released many songs with soothing melodies, which also stood the test of time.
In Bollywood, he got into the spotlight as Hrithik Roshan’s voice in Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai (2000) — Ek Pal Ka Jeena and Na Tum Jaano Na Hum. In films, he last lent his voice to Safarnama in Tamasha (2015). Indeed his popularity once again soared amid the pandemic, when his videos of performing pop hit O Sanam, went viral.
Mention this, and Ali humbly expresses his gratitude, and starts introspecting upon his pandemic experience.
“It was something that almost felt like it was going to happen, with the way the world was moving. Something like that was expected, which would change the things and world. And it just happened to be just like that,” mentions Ali, who has released multi-lingual single Amaraya with Israeli singer-songwriter Eliezer Cohen Botzer from cross-cultural album Lemalla.
As an individual, coping with the changes was not difficult for the artiste. “Naturally, for many years since the time I have been on the music scene, my life has been an isolated life. So, coming back to the farm… Again, there was nothing new about it, except that nature spoke very differently at that time,” he shares, adding, “Nature kind of came out and expressed itself in a way that I have never seen before, because there was no disturbance from anyone. You could see the animals being so free. You could see that in the air.”
Moreover, he was happy not to travel. “Because after a while, you feel that you need to put your roots down,” he concludes.
