{"id":503962,"date":"2026-06-21T12:59:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T12:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/503962\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T12:59:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T12:59:09","slug":"everyone-was-singing-in-films-viva-on-their-fame-in-streaming-age-how-bollywood-killed-indipop-exclusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/503962\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Everyone was singing in films’: Viva on their fame in streaming age, how Bollywood ‘killed’ indipop | Exclusive"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, after years of exile, the music catalogue of Viva<\/a>, India\u2019s original girl group, returned to streaming. Both albums from the 2000s band are streaming now, courtesy of KaanPhod Music. To nobody\u2019s surprise, the songs immediately began to get good streaming numbers, more than two decades after they were first released.<\/p>\n

\"VivaViva comprised of Neha Bhasin, Anushka Manchanda, Pratichee Mohapatra, and Mahua Kamat.<\/p>\n

To mark the occasion, the four original members of the band – Anushka Manchanda, Neha Bhasin<\/a>, Mahua Kamat, and Pratichee Mohapatra – sat down with Hindustan Times to talk about their journey and the changing landscape of Indian music.<\/p>\n

\u2018Where is the music\u2019<\/p>\n

The band members say they were not surprised by the response to their music arriving on streaming. Mahua Kamat says, \u201cThis started because our listeners, our fans who loved us over the years, asked, \u2018Where is the music?\u2019 This is their childhood, just like it was ours. We grew up with it. That was the catalyst for us to seek this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Viva was formed in 2002 after five girls won the inaugural season of Channel V\u2019s Popstars. Their first album, released the same year, topped the charts with many tracks becoming part of pop culture. Viva is regarded as India\u2019s first popular mainstream girl group. But even as they became famous, the girls were unaware of their fame, even when 50000 fans turned up at their first concert in Delhi. Neha Bhasin recalls, \u201cIt was unreal when we were first on stage together. There was so much chaos because everyone was trying to figure it out. People were breaking barricades, we were getting mobbed. At that time, we didn\u2019t realise this is happening because we were famous. It took many years to realise we were famous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their fame did spread far and wide. Mahua Kamat recalls being accosted at Hong Kong airport by a fan, while Anushka Manchanda<\/a> found a fanboy among the servers at a New York restaurant. Viva was a movement. Neha recalls, \u201cI think you cannot engineer or manufacture this. A movement becomes organic when it is. In our case, people came together to create good music, do great things. And that became popular.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Talent shows are more planned now\u2019<\/p>\n

Viva\u2019s triumph and their time on television on Popstars can be called the birth of reality TV in India. Along with Sa Re Ga Ma and Roadies, it was one of the first reality talent shows in the country. But it was devoid of the drama that exists in the genre today. Popstars ran for only two seasons and was over before the reality show boom truly began. Neha says that if it existed today, it would be \u2018more scripted\u2019. Pratichee Mohapatra agrees and adds, \u201cIt would be more scripted, like she said. There would be more efforts to evoke some extreme reactions. It would be more clickbait. Even the people who are trying to be part of a show, they come very prepared. Even what they say or do stuff to get those eyeballs. Everything feels very planned now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Viva\u2019s rise came towards the end of the glory years of pop music in India. From the 1990s to mid 2000s, Indian pop music – or Indipop as it was called – was at its peak. It gave independent artists and chartbusters by the dozen. But Mahua says the girls were unaware of the hierarchical supremacy Bollywood music enjoyed at the time. \u201cWe won a contest and we knew we could sing. We were just following what they mapped out for us. We didn\u2019t feel like we were breaking into a Bollywood-led industry,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

The \u2018death\u2019 of indipop<\/p>\n

Viva\u2019s albums were released in 2002 and 2003. By then, remixed had begun to take over in the independent music scene, and pop was fizzling out. Anushka Manchanda credits this to Bollywood \u2018borrowing\u2019 the pop sound. \u201cThey pulled the sound from the indipop and devoured it. They took singers like Shaan and Alisha Chinai from pop into films. Everyone was eventually singing in films,\u201d she says. Pratichee recalls how mainstream films began to utilise music videos – disconnected from the plot – to promote themselves. It was pop music, but integrated into Bollywood. \u201cIt killed the indipop industry,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Their rebirth on streaming has given the band and their sound a new lease of life, and the women are hopeful that their music will continue to be discovered by younger listeners. \u201cAll I hope is that they realise there were cool things being done in the early 00s, and we were part of it,\u201d sums up Mahua.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last month, after years of exile, the music catalogue of Viva, India\u2019s original girl group, returned to streaming.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[231695,172991,458,146,85,218440,46,231696,231697,194879],"class_list":["post-503962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-anushka-manchanda","tag-bollywood-music","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-indie-pop","tag-israel","tag-neha-bhasin","tag-pratichee-mohapatra","tag-viva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=503962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}