Anand-Milind - Choice of Singers

Choice of Singers

Unlike their biggest competitor, Nadeem-Shravan (who worked with selected favorites), Anand-Milind worked with and introduced a lot of playback singers. They initially recorded a few songs with Kishore Kumar. They also worked with legends Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle. It's common knowledge that Anand-Milind re-introduced Udit Narayan and Abhijeet. They also heavily promoted Poornima and worked with Sapna Mukherjee on a regular basis. Alka Yagnik, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Sadhna Sargam, Kumar Sanu and Anuradha Paudwal were regulars. Anand-Milind also continue to work with veterans like Suresh Wadkar. They also worked with S P Balasubramanyam, S. Janaki, Hariharan and KS Chithra. Chithra recorded her first Hindi soundtrack under the music direction of Anand-Milind (Love 1991). Ghazal singers Jagjit Singh, Anup Jalota, Pankaj Udhas and Manhar Udhas have also recorded few songs with the duo. Anand-Milind also teamed up on several occasions with Amit Kumar (in the early 90s). Their combination yielded many hits.

Anand-Milind also worked with Vinod Rathod a lot in the 90s, making him the voice of Govinda in hit songs for films like Raja Babu, Banarsi Babu, Hero No. 1 and Dulhe Raja, to name a few. They also recorded with Jolly Mukherjee, Alisha Chinai and Sukhwinder Singh. Sonu Nigam was a favorite in the late 90s and they teamed up for many a hit numbers. Anand himself sang a few songs. Pop singers Sunita Rao and Shweta Shetty have also recorded for them on several occasions. The qawali-pop king Altaf Raja recorded a few hit songs (all for films starring Mithun Chakraboty) under their supervision. Sudesh Bhosle has also been behind the microphone for the duo for several films. For the more folksy tunes, their first choice was always Sapna Awasthi over Ila Arun, with whom they recorded just one song. Anand-Milind also recorded a number of songs with the then child artist Aditya Narayan and also worked on many songs with Jaspinder Narula. Anand-Milind also managed to get south maestro Yesudas to record a song for them in the 1997 film Daayra. They also promoted Gayatri Iyer (Gayatri Ganjawala) in films like Loafer, Insaaf, Daanveer, Muqaddar and Tum Hi To Ho.

But Anand-Milind also promoted a lot of new talents whose careers who never took off. Some of these are Bela Sulakhe, Chandana Dixit, Bhavana Pandit, Jyotsna, Sumati, Uttara Kelkar, Vipin Sachdeva, Parvez, Sharon Prabhakar and Sarika Kapoor, to name a few.

Anand-Milind also got a lot of actors behind the microphone. Aamir Khan recited a few lines for the song Papa Kehte Hain (Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak), Aditya Pancholi for Dhak Dhak (Maha Sangram), Anupam Kher joined Amit Kumar for the song Aao Ji Aao (Mera Pati Sirf Mera Hain), Neelam recited a few lines in the title song of the film Ek Ladka Ek Ladki, Sanjay Dutt and Salman Khan crooned the title track of the film Chal Mere Bhai and recently Raghubir Yadav recorded a song for the yet to be released film, Yeh Khula Aasman.

Actor Aroon Bakshi also recorded many hit songs under Anand-Milind's music direction, which were mostly picturised on the main hero. Some of these include Tuna Tuna (Adharm), Jhule Jhule Lal (Jai-Kishen), filmed on Akshay Kumar, Mera Mehboob (Gopi Kishen), filmed on Sunil Shetty, Tha Tha Tha filmed on Ajay Devgun (Platform) and Boi Boi (Laadla), to name a few. Actor-Drector Sachin sung a song for the duo, for the shelved film directed by him, for ABCL, called Naam Kya Hain. Veteran lyricist Anand Bakshi also recorded a song for the film Jaan (for which he also worded the songs) composed by them.

With changing times, Anand-Milind now opt for the newer breed of singers and have done a good amount of work with Kay Kay, Sowmya Raoh, Shaan, Sunidhi Chauhan, Shreya Ghoshal, Kunal Ganjawala, June Banerjee, Monali Thakur, Rahul Seth and Richa Sharma.