These days, Himesh Reshammiya enters the stage like Batman might. He doesn’t walk on so much as emerge through smoke and trap door in black flared cape and sunglasses. The cap is firmly welded to his head and has become the leitmotif of his Cap Mania Tour, with a giant red replica looming over the stage.

“The cap happened because I lost my hair. It was the best look possible then but created an emotional connect,” he says. The admission is oddly disarming. His camouflage attempt spawned parodies but made him instantly recognizable. The transplanted hair that followed has been mercurial too — silky curtains, poker-straight spikes, side-swept bangs, retro shag. And while the hair styles may change, the nasal twang remains non-negotiable. Only some artists can turn what they were once mocked for into a punchline. Himesh, now 52, does that with ease. On stage, he asks fans: “Naak se gaaun kya?” (Should I sing from my nose?) and the stadium roars back, “Yes!”

That twang has carried him further than even he’d imagined. Along with Beyonce, Lady Gaga, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran, he’s made it to Bloomberg’s Pop Power List. Debuting at No 22, he is the first Indian to do so. The feat, he says, isn’t a fluke. “My strength has always been as a composer who knew how to spot the X-factor. My voice needed Himesh the composer to deliver those 50 back-to-back hits.”

It sounds faintly absurd phrased that way, except for one thing. The ranking is based on seven data-driven metrics including live revenues, ticket sales, digital song streams and social media following. “The numbers have spoken, so I've nothing to add,” he deadpans.

He’s had his share of critics. About ‘Jhalak Dikhla Jaa’, which released 20 years ago, he recalls, “People loved the song and I got awards, yet they asked, ‘Arre naak se kyun gaa raha hai?’ (Why are you singing nasally?)”

Fast-forward to 2025, and fans dressed in HR-emblazoned caps and jackets watch Reshammiya sing ‘tera tera… surroooor’, the song that launched a thousand memes and is now chanted by Gen Z in sold-out stadiums with the kind of fervour you usually witness for boybands and cricket finals.

The Delhi and Mumbai concerts saw 50,000 turn up. When Mumbai sold out, fans flew to Delhi where the concert was over two nights because one wasn’t enough. Though the show was meant to close at 10 pm, Himesh informed the crowd, “Aaj main mood mein aa gaya hoon,” and carried on for another hour. Nobody complained.

This is the same man who once baffled linguists by releasing an album titled ‘Aap Kaa Surroor’ with the respectful ‘Aap’ not even used once. Instead, it was Tera on a loop — Naam Hai Tera, Tera Fitoor, Tera Mera Milna, Tera Aana, Tera Deewana — like a Freudian fixation running through his discography like a watermark. Now, after two decades, five movies, a hair transplant, a vocal-cord surgery that gifted him a second bass octave, and a six-pack, he has been rebranded by fans as ‘Lord Himesh’.

His unlikely comeback began with Surroorgasm. Not a medical condition but a meme page that mutated into a stan account with nearly 1.5 lakh followers on Instagram.

Soon came spin-offs like Himesh Doing Things. Exhibit A: Himesh as a gym bro downing protein. Exhibit B: Himesh slow-walking through a desert in a black trench coat embodying global warming. Exhibit C: Himesh licking his lips diagonally for the first time. “I love it,” he says about his meme-ification. His listeners, he insists, were always there at parties, weddings and clubs. “Even when the films didn’t work.”

Every singer, he argues, has a USP. The nasal twang is his. “It’s not a gimmick,” he insists, but a lineage. “Even Kishore da (Kumar) loved K L Saigal saab, who was nasal. Our roots have always been nasal.”

But the “real Himesh” he explains, is about smuggling complex ragas to unsuspecting masses, the way a parent sneaks veggies into a child’s sandwich. “Sometimes it’s a pure raga, sometimes a mishra raga. Sanam Mere Humraaz, for instance, was raga Bhairav in disguise,” he holds forth. His trick, he says, is simplifying India’s musical DNA until everyone can hum it on the bus.

Something he learnt from his father, composer Vipin Reshammiya, one of the first to plug electronica into Bollywood. “Composing was in my blood. But he taught me how to compose for the common man with high-standard notes.” Armed with that formula, Reshammiya built himself an arsenal of 350 songs — tragic ballads, shaadi bangers, heartbreak anthems — you name it.

He has his own homegrown focus group of family, neighbours, school friends. He plays them a tune, watches their reactions, and sorts the track into cool urban, desi, or universal. If they love it, it stays. If they don’t, it gets tweaked until they do. He now has a library of more than 2,000 songs. “Even today, I compose one a day.”

The point, he adds, was never to stay a ‘panchwa gayak’ (fifth backup singer).” Playback felt too small a box. “Michael Jackson never sang for Tom Cruise, did he?” His ambition was to be “a complete package. Voice, composition, visual character.” His signature chant: “Jai Mata di, let’s rock!” is part of the package, and it works equally well in stadiums, on Instagram, and at Vaishno Devi, where he’s performed half a dozen jagrans in recent years.

But his way back into the public imagination was ‘Badass Ravi Kumar’, a retro ’80s-type action film released in February where he leans into his memes, sprinting across Florence’s Duomo roof, slicing villains in half, and gnawing on an unlit cigarette because the line goes: ‘Woh cigarette peeta nahi hai par cigarette ke bina jeeta nahi hai (He doesn’t smoke but can’t live without his cigarette).’ “The film’s tagline was ‘logic is optional’,” he deadpans.

And it lived up to it. It’s the sort of absurd that saw fans on Reddit and elsewhere induct ‘Badass Ravi Kumar’ into the “so-bad-it’s-good” hall of fame. The Rs 20-crore film made over Rs 25 crore in its first run and unleashed the sort of delirium in theatres that big stars now crave as multiplex footfalls thin. Apparently, OTT platforms are now fighting over rights. “I just needed one film to give me that ‘hit actor’ tag that connected with the youth,” he says, fully aware that Gen Z discovered Ravi Kumar first and only later dug into Reshammiya’s catalogue of nasal bangers.

In a curious prequel to his pop stardom, while most 17-year-olds were solving algebra, “I produced my first Hindi show, ‘Andaz’ in the ’80s,” he recalls, starring heavyweights like Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Poonam Dhillon, Prem Chopra and others.

Ask Reshammiya about hobbies, and he valiantly says, “Cricket and board games.” His wife, sitting nearby, cuts in. “He’s giving you fakeology! Basically, he eats, sleeps, drinks, travels, dreams only films. He has no hobbies!”

Reshammiya laughs but doesn’t protest too hard. “We’re lucky that our hobby is our profession.” If Sonia keeps him grounded, she’s also the reason his cap matches his cape. “She’s my stylist and says heads should turn when I enter a room. My curated look and fitness are part of the job.”

So, what other summits does he want to scale? “I’m a very bad dancer,” he admits, “but I’m going to learn so that in ten years I can perform with a six-pack.” Before you raise an eyebrow, he talks about his next project: “An English-language global pop blockbuster.” He says he’s already written and sung 15 tracks, due this December.

And will it be nasal? He doesn’t flinch. “See, my basic texture will always be there. But the grammar, production, composition… those will be genuinely international.”

The nose, it turns out, knows no borders.

Music director and producer Vipin Reshammiya, father of singer-composer Himesh Reshammiya, has died at the age of 88. As per reports, the veteran music director was admitted to a Mumbai hospital on Wednesday night due to breathing and age-related issues.

In a media statement issued on behalf of the family, close friend Anup Singh said Vipin Reshammiya died on Wednesday.

“It is with profound grief that we announce the peaceful passing of our beloved Vipin Reshammiya on September 18, 2024. A kind soul with a heart full of love, his presence lit up the lives of all who knew him. He leaves behind a legacy of kindness, wisdom, cherished memories and timeless music,” the statement read.

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