Career
After breaking out with his first hit album "Pack That Smack" in 1986 and "Bombay City" the next year, he became the highest-selling English rock musician in India and the only one in the country to be awarded Gold Discs in this category. "Pack That Smack" became his first album to be released by a national record company, CBS. This was an anti-drugs themed album, especially against addiction to Heroin which contained songs such as Down with Brown, Just a Hippie, as well as socio-political satire such as Mr Minister - a nursery rhyme-styled song on politician who went to sleep once elected to power; and So Wie Du - a recording of an award-winning live performance. Bombay City contained hits such as Ocean Queen, Against you/Against me, and a hilarious take on the condition of telephone services in India, Ode to Graham Bell.
Around this time, invited to attend international music festivals and concerts, Remo again started traveling around the world. His first international event was at the Dresden International Song Competition in former East Germany that attracted competitors from socialist and communist countries. There he won three awards, the Press Critics Award, the Audience Favorite Award, and the overall Second Prize. He once represented India, when it was invited, in the Tokyo Music Festival. He also took part in the Festival of India in the USSR, the MIDEM '96 Music Festival in Hong Kong, besides Festivals in Germany, Bulgaria, Macau, Seychelles and Mauritius. As a stage performer he has by now been to every continent around the world.
Although his now legendary composition Jalwa of the 1987 hit film made him instantly famous in India, he resisted the urge to join the commercial Hindi film music industry full-time, as he felt that he would have to compromise his artistic values by doing so, and he felt that his main body of work ought to be his own songs written out of his own personal experiences, not songs commissioned for film situations.
The next album he released in 1992 with Magnasound was titled Politicians don't know to Rock'n'Roll. Released in the backdrop of communal violence spreading in India, terrible events such as the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya, the album expressed the political tension of the time. It included songs such as Don't kick up the Rao - about the then Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, A song for India, How does it feel? and a song about safe sex titled Everybody wants to.
In 1995, Remo Fernandes finally moved into Hindi Pop and film music to become a playback singer, by teaming up with the legendary director Mani Ratnam and composer A. R. Rahman. He sang the song "Humma Humma" in the Hindi film Bombay. The song went on to earn Remo a Double Platinum.
Huya Ho was the next hit he composed for the film Khamoshi: The Musical which was released in 1996.
In 1998, along with his newly formed band called the Microwave Papadums, he released his first and only Hindi pop/rock album to date titled O, Meri Munni( sample). It went to the top of all the charts, and brought in another Platinum Album.
In 2000 Remo became the first Indian solo artist to have a song officially released solely on the Internet. Cyber Viber generated 16,000 downloads in 2 weeks. Other artists in India who also released top hit songs on the Internet that same year were both Mumbai based bands, Pentagram & Dementra.
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