Shakthisree Gopalan

Born in Kochi, Kerala, Shakthisree Gopalan is a singer, performing artist and songwriter. Along with studying at Rajagiri Public School in Kalamassery, Shakthi also trained herself in Carnatic Music Vocals for a period of 13 years. After her schooling she moved to Chennai to join the Anna University's School of Planning and Architecture. Shakthisree started playback singing in the year 2008. The first opportunity came from Guruprasad Subramaniam, who was doing music for a Kannada film at that time. He got in touch with Shakthi after he heard some of her songs on 'ReverbNation' (a platform for musicians). She used to put up original compositions that she was making with friends at that time, on ReverbNation. Unfortunately, that song never came out. While she was at the studio to record for Guruprasad, he asked her to write four lines in English and put it to tune. She was outside at the coffee machine, writing those four lines and singing it out. The recording was happening at AN studios, Chennai. At that time, A.R. Rahman happened to be going to the first floor of the studio to work on his own music, and noticed her. Impressed by what he heard, A.R.Rahman asked someone on his team to get her phone number. In her excitement, she gave them the wrong phone number. Shakthi believed that this story has come to an end, but destiny had other plans. A few days later, she received a call from her friend, who asked her to get to A.R. Rahman's studio immediately. She went, sang a couple of lines and joined A.R.Rahman as a backing vocalist. Her first song for A.R.Rahman, as backing vocalist, was 'Lattoo' for the film Ghajini (2008). In the final year of her Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch) program, Shakthi had done extensive research in her thesis on designing a music school. As luck would have it, in the year 2011, A.R.Rahman got in touch with her with regards to the design of a new campus for 'KM College for Music and Technology', Rahman's music school. After two years of work, the music school was inaugurated in the year 2013. It was during this period, that A.R.Rahman asked if she would like to sing a solo song (instead of providing backing vocals, which she used to do at that moment) ? She handed Rahman her Demo CD, which she always carried with her, and this is how 'Nenjukulle' from Kadal (2013) happened to her. She performed the song in an episode of MTV Unplugged with A.R.Rahman as well. 'Nenjukulle' also won her the Best Playback Singer (Female) award at the Filmfare Awards ceremony in the year 2014. Shakthisree has also worked with composers like Anirudh Ravichander, Harris Jayaraj, Santhosh Narayanan and sung songs in Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada and Hindi language. Apart from being a playback-singer and recording artist in the Indian Film Music Industry, Shakthi is also a singer - songwriter, and has been releasing her original music independently and performing at live concerts through the years. She is part of a couple of bands - 'Off the Record' and 'Pyjama Conspiracy'.