Suggested Topics :
Madhubanti Bagchi on Facing Pressure to Perform Beyond the Music: 'I Almost Feel Like a Circus Animal'
The singer on Reels, pop-star expectations, and why visibility has become harder than the singing itself.
Somewhere along the way, making music stopped being enough. Today, every song demands a reel, a hook step, a performance for the algorithm. For Madhubanti Bagchi, that shift has been unsettling. “I’m a singer; I was never trained for this,” she says at THR India's musicians' roundtable.
Bagchi, who has voiced popular chartbusters like 'Aaj Ki Raat', 'Peelings', 'Tum Mere Na Huye' and Dhurandhar's 'Shararat', says she is clear about where the discomfort begins.
“I’ve done my job in the studio. I’ll do it again in my live shows. The moment a song comes out, the pressure is to dance on the hook step. And I’m thinking—why?” she says. The expectation, she admits, makes her uneasy. “I almost feel like a circus animal. I’m not supposed to be doing this.”
It isn’t just about social media. The pressure has entered the creative process itself. “Even when we’re recording a song, there are three people in the room taking BTS. I’m like, we need to focus here! This is music,” she says. But she knows that in today's day and age, you have to do it. “It’s part and parcel of making music now.”
For artists outside the film space, she says the challenge runs deeper. She prefers calling it “non-film music” rather than “independent.”
“Because truly, independent music is really hard to do. When people invest huge amounts, they will have opinions. Then you’re not an independent musician anymore.”
Along with that comes a rigid image of what success should look like. “Certain narratives are being pushed. This idea of what a pop star should be,” she says. Music, she notes, is curated for listeners. “You don’t even know how you came across it, but you did.” Doing your own thing is not really being encouraged," she adds.
Her own rise came through playback singing, and the sudden visibility was overwhelming. “Vocally, I was always ready. If you ask me to record a song right now, I can do it,” she says. What drained her was everything else. “If someone says there’s one more photoshoot, I’m like—come on. I’m not built for this.”
The attention made her retreat. “I became more introverted. It was scary. You’re suddenly supposed to know what to say, how to dress, how to behave. Mentally, it took me a year.”