Arijit Singh sent shockwaves across the music industry and the audience on Tuesday evening when he announced his retirement from playback singing. “I am happy to announce that I am not going to be taking any new assignments as a playback vocalist from now on. I am calling it off. It was a wonderful journey,” he wrote on social media.
Arijit has surely been at it consistently for over a decade as every year, he lends his voice to at least a dozen of songs. Sample this: this year, in January itself, six songs have been released which feature his voice. One of them is a non-film song — the title track of Salim-Sulaiman’s album Sukoon 2.0. The other five are from films, with a couple of them even topping the charts.
These include “Sitaare” from Sriram Raghavan’s period war drama Ikkis, “Ghar Kab Aaoge”, the rehashed version of iconic Border (1997) track “Sandese Aate Hain” from Anurag Singh’s blockbuster period war drama Border 2, “Sunhari Kirne” from Gandhi Talks, and “Hum Toh Tere Hi Liye The” from Vishal Bhardwaj’s upcoming romantic thriller O’Romeo.
However, the last released song of Arijit is the patriotic anthem “Maatrubhumi” from Apoorva Lakhia’s upcoming military drama Battle of Galwan, filmed on Salman Khan. Arijit hanging up his boots after singing for Salman is life coming full circle for him, given the much-documented 12-year old feud between the actor and the singer.
How did Salman and Arijit’s feud start?
Arijit was at his peak in 2014, having rendered his voice to countless chartbusters, naturally not allowing him any time to rest. This was the around the time he belted popular tracks like “Suno Na Sangemarmarmar” from Youngistaan, “Palat – Tera Hero Idhar Hai” and “Shanivaar Raati” from Main Tera Hero, “Mast Magan” from 2 States, “Raat Bhar” from Heropanti, “Muskurane” from CityLights, “Shaayraana” from Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty, “Humdard” from Ek Villain, “Samjhawan” from Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania”, “Sukoon Mila” from Mary Kom, “Manwa Laage” from Happy New Year, and “Jaise Mera Tu” from Happy Ending.
Salman was hosting an awards show that year, and he invited Arijit to receive the Best Playback Singer – Male award for his love anthem “Tum Hi Ho” from Mohit Suri’s 2013 blockbuster romantic drama Aashiqui 2. As Arijit looked visibly exhausted, Salman quipped in his signature irreverent humour, “Soye nahi kya?” (You didn’t sleep or what?), to which Arijit responded candidly, “Aap logo ne sula diya” (You guys put me off to sleep). While that seemed like friendly banter on stage initially, it snowballed into something else in the coming years.
The Sultan controversy
The tension surfaced in 2016 when Arijit put out a public apology on social media ahead of the release of Salman’s film, Ali Abbas Zafar’s sports drama Sultan. He had recorded the popular romantic song “Jag Ghoomeya”, filmed on Salman and Anushka Sharma, for the movie, but it was another version — rendered by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan — that made it to the film and the album instead, allegedly thanks to Salman.
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“I never insulted you… I tried so many times to apologize. Please don’t remove the song I sang for Sultan. Let me retire with that song in my library,” wrote Arijit then, rather prophetically. While he deleted the post later, it had already broken the internet, with netizens wondering if Salman had actually kicked Arijit out of his film and was actively ensuring that the singer doesn’t get enough work in the Hindi film industry because of the dig he made at him a couple of years before that. However, while Salman didn’t clear the air, Arijit continued to get a lot of work nonetheless.
Salman, Arijit’s recent reunion
It took seven years for Salman and Arijit to bury their hatchet and finally collaborate for a couple of songs in Manish Sharma’s 2023 spy thriller Tiger 3, also produced by Aditya Chopra’s banner Yash Raj Films, which had ironically backed Sultan. Arijit sang both the romantic track “Ruaan” and the closing-credits dance number “Leke Prabhu Ka Naam”, filmed on Salman and Katrina Kaif, with Salman even hyping it up as their maiden collaboration during the promotions.
But it was only last year on a Bigg Boss 19 Weekend Ka Vaar episode that Salman finally addressed the feud with Arijit. “Arijit aur main bahut achhe dost hai. Woh misunderstanding mere side se huyi thi. Uske baad usne gaane bhi kiye mere liye. Tiger 3 mein kiya usne, aage Galwan. (Arijit and I are very good friends. That misunderstanding was from my end. After that, he also sang songs for me in Tiger 3 and now, in Battle of Galwan).
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Days after Salman’s confession, the makers of Battle of Galwan released the film’s first track — Matrubhumi, sung by Arijit, written by Sameer Anjaan, composed by Himesh Reshammiya, and filmed on Salman. It felt like Arijit had completed a full arc, an unfulfilled wish, and checked a box in his bucket list before he could hang up his boots from playback singing. And then he did.
