Legendary singer S P Balasubrahmanyam dies

Celebrated singer S P Balasubramanyam died on Friday noon after almost two months of treatment. He was 74. He had  been in hospital since August 5 after testing corona positive.  He tested negative over a month later but could not be taken off the ventilator. On Thursday, the hospital - MGM Healthcare - said in a medical bulletin that SPB's condition had worsened in the last 24 hours and that he was on maximum life support. His son S P Charan has been sharing health updates about his father on social media and was optimistic these last few weeks.Music was his life. So much so, that he won a Guinness World Record for recording most number of songs. Till date, he recorded over 40,000 songs in multiple languages. He was fondly called SPB.  He also sung songs in Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Sanskrit, English and Urdu.

 Tributes to him poured in on social media soon after his death. Kamal Haasan, who visited the hospital on Thursday evening, tweeted in Tamil: "It's my good fortune that I was the shadow image of SPB for a long time. His fame will live for 7 generations." Rahman wrote, "Devastated." Tributes were also shared by politicians such as H D Deve Gowda, Shiva Kumar and Khushbu Sundar as well as Hema Malini. Rajinikanth's daughter Soundarya was among the first to share a tribute, 

Born in a Telugu family in Nellore district S.P. Balasubrahmanyam was  hailed  the most versatile artiste in South Indian film word. Besides being a playback singer par excellence, he was equally  successful as  music director, dubbing artist. He had acted in some noted movies as well.His versatility covered well   beyond Telugu and Tamil songs.He had sung more than 40000 songs in more than  half a dozen languages that included   Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi. Odiya, Assamese, Konkani and so on.His popular Hindi songs like ‘Tere Mere Beech Mein’’ ( Ek Duuje Ke Liye) , ‘’Pehle pehle Pyar, ( Hum Aapka Hai Kaun”, ‘”Dil Deewana…” (Maine Pyar Kiya”) are evergreen songs in Bollywood.

SPB became a national sensation with his classic and semi-classic songs in 1980 Telugu film Sankarabharanam. This film by veteran Director K Viswanath set a trend for series of musical films. He won his first national award for the songs in this epic film. The versatile singer went on to win national honour for five more times.Balasubramaniam doned the role of actor, character as well as different roles  in more than 70 films, mainly in Tamil and Telugu..

He  produced films in most of the southern Indian languages, including the dubbed version of “Mayuri” in Tamil (1984) for which he had composed music. This film won him Andhra Pradesh state award for the original Telugu score.Other notable productions was Telugu movie  “Subha Sankalpam” with Kamal Hassan in the lead role.