EASY ON THE EAR

TWO YEARS AFTER HE MADE IT TO BARACK OBAMA’S PLAYLIST, PRATEEK KUHAD IS LETTING A SENSE OF EASE DEFINE HIS LIFE AND MUSIC

- Tatsam Mukherjee

It has been almost a decade since singer-songwriter Prateek Kuhad blew up with ‘Raat Raazi’ on YouTube. The minimalist music video (feat. Kuhad framed on a couch, playing a guitar) and the intimate vocals slowly gathered its audience. Since Kuhad’s last album Cold/Mess released in 2018, things have changed dramatically. “I used to play for 12 people. I remember a show in Blue Frog Delhi in 2013. There weren’t too many people there that night. I saw two people listening to me and I was blown away that they were also singing along. From there, we’ve come to 10,000 people in Delhi, who have bought tickets only to see me,” says Kuhad. The title track of Cold/Mess famously ended up on former US president Barack Obama’s ‘Best Music of 2019’ playlist.

Kuhad is now back with a new EP, Shehron Ke Raaz, featuring four tracks, including an acoustic version of the already popular song, ‘Kasoor’. The sound is what we have come to expect from Kuhad, and even the lyrics have familiar rhyming schemes— “