Faheem Abdullah on Becoming a Celebrity After ‘Saiyaara’: 'It Was Like a Rocket; It Changed My Life'

Singer-songwriter Faheem Abdullah never imagined music would make him visible, but the chartbuster title track of Saiyaara changed everything for him. “My primary and only goal was to make music. I didn’t come to Mumbai to sell my songs,” he says at THR India's musicians' roundtable. Becoming a public figure was never part of the plan, and yet, that’s what followed.

His journey began almost accidentally. ‘Jhelum’, his first song, wasn’t meant to gain the traction it did. “I wasn’t ready to start my musical journey,” he admits. At the time, he was working on a short film and needed a song for it. When that arrangement fell through, he decided to make one himself.

“I spent three months making that song. I thought ten thousand people would watch it in Kashmir. Instead, it became one of the biggest hits there,” he recalls. Things began to change more steadily in 2023, when he signed with a label and released ‘Ishq’. Yet even then, fame felt abstract. “People didn’t really know me by my face,” he adds. Songs like ‘Sajde’ and ‘Ehsaas’ grew slowly, finding listeners over time.

Then Saiyaara arrived and everything shifted. “That was like a rocket and a lot of things changed in my life,” he says.

With that came a new identity he hadn’t anticipated. “People started calling me a celebrity. I didn’t know how to be one. I still don’t,” he says. Even those closest to him began to see him differently. “I would really love people to address me as an artist. This balance between being an artist and being a celebrity is very difficult. It exhausts you,” he says.

For someone who had intentionally remained under the radar, the exposure felt overwhelming. “I didn’t even show my face earlier; now cameras are sticking in my face!” he says. Still, he didn’t resist the change entirely. “I think I was open to it all,” he says, describing himself as selectively introverted.