Asha Bhosle is gearing up for her 90th birthday on September 8. While she will be surrounded by her family members on the day, she will also spend a part of it on a stage in Dubai, doing what she loves the most – singing. “It will be a Broadway kind of a show,” she says. Like her concerts, it will include a range of songs that she has rendered over the years. It’s difficult to handpick a bunch of songs, considering that the legendary singer has lent her voice to everything from fast tracks and ghazals to thumris and cabaret numbers over seven decades.

Ask the singer what inspired her to push her boundaries right from the beginning of her career, and she says, “I wanted to be different from Lata didi. Nobody would have given me work if I had sung like her. I realized this at the very beginning of my career, and that’s why I kept experimenting with the kind of songs I sang and even my voice. My voice was obviously different from hers, but I made it sharper. She sang softly, so I knew it wouldn’t work if I did the same.”

Over the years, her versatility was noticed. She adds, “After songs like Eena Meena Deeka and other such numbers, people began saying I can sing all kinds of songs. They would say she sings a Madan Mohan track as well as a Shankar Jaikishen number and songs of completely different styles like S D Burman and R D Burman. When I was staying in Kolhapur, I would listen to a lot of English songs because of that, I would understand things like vibrating my voice or hitting the straight notes.”

Talking about her journey in the music world, she says, “I never thought that I would become a playback singer, I became one due to circumstances. But the music was in me. Kaam koi bhi ho, mehnat zaroori hai, uske bina koi kaam hota nahi hai. Even today, I do riyaaz every morning. If I am unable to sleep at night, I do my riyaaz even at 2 am… only I do it a bit softly so that others are not disturbed (smiles). I tell my granddaughter (Zanai Bhosle) that if she wants to get into singing or acting, she has to immerse herself completely in the work that she wants to do.”