There was no doubt in young Armaan Malik’s mind that he wanted to make music professionally. He started learning classical music at the age of four. By eight, he was doing voice overs, jingles, and songs for children’s movies in Bollywood. By 10, he was in and out of studios as much as another kid might have frequented a local playground.
Now 26, Armaan sings in over 10 regional languages across India, and his reach has expanded globally. In 2020, he debuted in English, with his first single “Control,” which the Bollywood balladeer won an MTV EMA for. In January 2022, the multi-hyphenate musician kicked off the year by going back to his ballad roots with new single “You,” a soft, guitar-led track, with romantic lyrics and refined vocals. But it all began with Bollywood.
“In India, they live and breathe Bollywood music,” Armaan tells Teen Vogue. Bollywood is so ingrained in the everyday life of an Indian; it’s the heart and soul of the nation. In the evenings, families sit down after a meal to watch TV together. Primetime television in India includes a genre that has already seen its prime in the western world: singing competition shows. Somehow, these shows have survived and thrived, and they’re where Armaan lodged a foothold in the industry.
When he was nine, he became a contestant on Indian singing competition show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, which was having its first spinoff season for children called L’il Champs. It was around this time that his older brother gifted him an iPod nano, filled with music for him to explore. “It had all these songs on it by Michael Buble and John Mayer. And I feel like in a way that was my introduction to English music,” Armaan tells Teen Vogue. “That kind of set a foundation for what kind of musician I’d be in the future.”
He wanted to make pop music, but his father sat him down as a teenager and explained to him that the country they live in consumes Bollywood music, so if he wanted to make this a career, that’s where he would have to start. “It's a very different environment. It's Bollywood. And if you're not a playback singer, you're not a mainstream popular singer. It's as simple as that. But that’s not the case anymore,” Armaan says. He eventually went on to pursue playback singing as his career, which became more successful than anyone could have imagined, and he’s gone on to be known as Bollywood’s ballad king, the “prince of romance.”
Though he took his father’s advice — which he now cites as a great decision in retrospect — the spark inside of him that yearned to sing English pop was still fanned into a flame. He had been seeking artistic freedom, a way for his passions to come to fruition. It was 2017, and Armaan was tired. He was on the way home from performing a concert, sitting in a car with his parents and he broke down. “I told my parents, ‘I'm exhausted. Because I'm singing the songs day in [and] day out that have made me Armaan Malik. But I'm not feeling them anymore.’”
His parents are a huge support system for him, so much so that they travel with him on his trips abroad for work, just to make sure he’s doing okay. The entire Malik family is so deeply embedded in this music industry. His father, Daboo Malik, is a Bollywood composer and director. His mother, Jyothi, is his mom-ager, and even makes an appearance on Armaan’s collection for DIVE Studio’s Mindset. Armaan’s older brother, Amaal Mallik, is a Bollywood composer and singer, with over a hundred songs attributed to him. They’ve all been instrumental in making him the person — and artist — he is today.
Everything’s come full circle for Armaan in the past few years. In 2019, he was a judge on another Indian singing competition show, similar to where he got his start 13 years prior. A year after that, the singer released “Control,” which went on to be a platinum record in India. He’s since had three other successful releases, including “Echo,” a global collaboration with K-pop star Eric Nam and Los Angeles-based producer and DJ, KSHMR.
Armaan’s new single, “You,” brings him back to a place where he finds comfort, and a warmth that reminds him of his past identities. “I would definitely say ‘You’ is very… me. I feel like I'm really, really, comfortable singing ballads and romantic songs just because I've sung so many in Hindi and in Bollywood, it just feels like an emotion that resonates with me much more than any other kind of genre,“ he says, recognizing that this is something of a homecoming for him. Together with his friend and frequent collaborator, Los Angeles based songwriter Natania, the two have made a track that he’s proud of. He not only was able to flex his vocal chops, but also had a hand in producing, songwriting, and doing his own backing vocals. “You” is the culmination of 14 years of experience and training.
“You” feels familiar. Not because it sounds like any other artist creating any romantic ballad. But because this sound and style is so quintessentially Armaan Malik. We’re seeing an artist reimagined, reintroduced to the world as his most authentic self.
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