29-05-2025
Did Shankar Mahadevan Really Sing 'Breathless' With A Single Breath?
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Shankar Mahadevan's 'Breathless' is as iconic as they come. But the song has every once in a while made folks wonder if the singer really sang the iconic number in a single breath.
'I have received some truly devastating news today. Noone talk to me while I go cry, (sic)" wrote a bamboozled user on X as their Google search delivered them a rude shock and shook their life-long perceived reality. The Google's answer? 'No, Shankar Mahadevan did not sing 'Breathless" in one continuous breath. It's true, it always has been. It's like learning that wrestling isn't real after years of religious watching and intently following all its plots and subplots. But the singer behind 'Kajra Re", 'Desi Girl", 'Noor E Khuda", 'Dil Chahta Hai", 'Bumbro", 'Maa", 'Sapno Se Bhare Naina", among many other melodious numbers hasn't ever shied away from letting us all know, the audiences, that 'Breathless" was, in fact, not sung breathlessly.
Still, the title of the song has safeguarded 'Breathless" as a track that was sung in one continuous breath for over two decades only for one of us to Google or check Reddit one day to debunk the myth.
Breathless
It was early in his career and Mahadevan was busy composing jingles and working in advertising. He then embarked on a journey to create an Indi-pop album. The year was 1998. The singer from the legendary Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy trio approached the lyrical genius Javed Akhtar to write for his album. The singer gave Akhtar saab the meter to pen the songs. What happened next left Mahadevan breathless. 'It looked like a magazine article," Mahadevan upon receiving '4 sheets of lyrics" from Akhtar. It looked like the newspaper, the singer admitted.
After handing him sheets for 'Breathless", the title track of the 1998 album with the same name, Akhtar suggested the singer go the route of English classical music. The song was devoid of any structure – it lacked conventional writing. The 2-minute and 53-second long song is devoid of stanzas, verses or breaks – the general structural pillars of a song.
'A song has a mukhda then music, antara and then music, that kind of a thing. But when we are improvising, it doesn't have a structure, so why can't we write something like that? A structure-less parabola as it is called in Physics– it goes up, it comes down, it is fast, it is slow, 'upar ke surr hai, neeche ke surr hai', so it is a very unstructured kind of a thing, but it has it's own structure," Mahadevan told the Indian Express.
Not Breathless
In an interview with Nation Next, Mahadevan was asked if the song was a one-take, one-breath wonder. The singer responded with a negative, implying that it was shot with breaks and chops. It was then stitched together masterfully to make 'Breathless" appear breathless. Genius.
Mahadevan also revealed that 'Breathless" was composed by him using a dictaphone in a taxi while he was travelling back to Navi Mumbai.
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