MUMBAI: Founder of pop group Bombay Vikings, singer-songwriter Neeraj Shridhar is set to stage a comeback as a music director.

It has been more than 15 years for Neeraj Shridhar in the Indian music industry. Do you remember these songs and music videos ‘Kya Soorat Hai’, ‘Woh Chali’ and ‘Chhodh Do Aanchal’ that took India by storm? Ever since he formed his iconic musical group Bombay Vikings, he shot to popularity in Bollywood. He has some chartbusters numbers like ‘Hare Ram Hare Ram’ from ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa’, ‘Character Dheela’ from Ready, ‘Jhak Maar Ke’ from ‘Desi Boyz’, ‘Twist’ from ‘Love Aaj Kaal’, ‘Papa Toh Band Bajaye’ from Housefull-2, ‘Race Saanson Ki’ from ‘Race’ and many more.

In a candid conversation with radioandmusic.com, the ‘Woh Chali’ singer said, “I have gone into music direction but I didn’t go out and announce it yet. I have already composed music for a film called ‘Irada’ under Irada Entertainment. The music is completely different; it doesn’t have the usual item numbers. It required music in that sense, as there are intense characters and actors like Naseeruddin Shah and Arshad Warsi playing the lead roles.”

When we asked him about the music of the film, he said, “One of the songs is sung by Harshdeep Kaur which is a very beautiful song. There is this other song which was sung by Papon, but initially, it was supposed to be sung by Arijit Singh. I was really eager to have Arijit and we made a song which suits Arijit’s tone, but the makers of the film didn’t want that song, instead they wanted a song which sounded like one of the MTV Unplugged numbers. So we had to play all those instruments live to create the song. Papon has sung the song brilliantly.”

Directed by debutant directors Aparna Singh and Nishant Tripathi, ‘Irada’ is scheduled to release this winter.