Vineet Singh Hukmani’s ‘Nine’ is a blend of stories with songs

Disrupting the status quo is an inborn craving for him, says Vineet Singh Hukmani who wanted to bridge the gap between music and the written word. Moving forward with an idea to provide an immersive experience to the audience/readers, the singer-songwriter expanded his repertoire by launching a multi-media concept Nine — a collection of nine thrilling stories based on his original songs. At the end of each story, the book has an embedded QR code that will lead the reader to a song. The book reached the number one position on Amazon in the first week of launch last month.

This Harvard Business School alumnus and former CEO of 94.3 RadioOne is also the first-ever artiste to have nine songs reach the number one position in a year.

Vineet speaks of his endeavours in an exclusive interview:

The cover of ‘Nine’
| Photo Credit: By arrangement

How did you hit upon the idea of integrating stories and songs?

Music is intangible but a book is something you hold and it epitomises tangibility. Creating such a combination was a lot of hard work, but I am happy I listened to that call for disruption within. Whether you are a musician or an author, the endeavour must be to differentiate and to keep your audience and therefore yourself, on your toes.

What came first, the song or the story?

Let me try and explain this with an analogy. Imagine you are planning a holiday to a scenic destination and you see pictures of the places you want to visit. You have already decided by looking at the pictures what interests you more but the actual order in which you visit the places may differ entirely due to logistics. I think the stories that you read in the book were already embedded in me, but they came out first as music! When the music was done, it felt incomplete, like if you missed seeing one of the places you had planned to visit. The book and album together make the journey feel complete. The experience of both together is richer for me as a creator and I hope the audience feels the same.

How challenging was it to thematically connect the song with the story?

I felt the essence of the story and song needed to be the same and not a literal adaptation of each other. So one of my stories, ‘I Pray’, which explores the possibility of something/someone supernatural protecting you all the time, contains an action/adventure plot that allows you to realise how important prayer can be in a dangerous situation. The song, however, assumes the prayer worked for you and saved you and the gratitude is expressed in the song in a cool hip-hop manner. Similarly, in the lead single of the album Nine, the song’s essence of being there, wholeheartedly, for the people you love is expressed in the lyrics Nine times out of 10 I’ll be there for you, the only other time I’ll be thinking of you. The story takes a more dramatic and edgy approach to convey how the main character goes against huge odds to save his family. The challenge was to connect the essence in both the story and the song without compromising on the richness of each individually.

Any particular reason for sticking to the thriller genre for all your stories?

That is the genre that I thoroughly enjoy. I am a movie junkie and I love thrillers with unpredictable twists and turns. Music has a sound-tracking effect when coupled with the right visuals in a person’s mind. I wanted to engage that action/adventure cinema in people’s minds with the stories and once the song is heard at the end of each story, the immersiveness is heightened. Commercially speaking, the action-adventure genre in books or movies is highly sought after by readers/viewers and so I was naturally pleased that the book was #1 on Amazon in the launch week itself in this genre.

My agents and publisher are pitching the book to movie/OTT producers both in India and abroad so that the stories can come alive on screens. Who knows, one day my favourite Hollywood action hero, Dwayne Johnson, or Vicky Kaushal in India, could be in these stories. I truly feel that the book is written with a global backdrop but the Indian OTT scene is changing so rapidly, that the lines of movie-making styles are blurring every day. In this scenario, Indian directors and actors need stories that keep the audience on edge and movie-makers here can compete with their global counterparts in terms of this new streaming age.

How different is writing fiction from lyrics?

Lyrics have to hit you more quickly as they reside in a song of 3.5 minutes whereas a story can be as long as you want it to be, provided you can hold the audience’s interest and intrigue. Writing a song is as spontaneous as enjoying the breeze but telling a story is communicating evocatively, how that breeze got there right when you needed it. The common factor in both is the essence of the moral or life lesson/experience that you want to convey. The difference is in the magnitude of expression. I am glad I did this as I have now witnessed, first-hand, the power of both a song and a story separately and together.

Now that an author is born, can we expect more books from you?

I feel like I should not classify myself as an author or singer but as a content provider or an expressionist of some sort who wants to give the audience something more challenging and immersive each time. Books have a longer shelf life than music and so yes, I would like to continue to explore story writing. Some of the pre-order readers who have read the book, are asking me to write longer format books while others are asking me to perform the songs with the stories as a backdrop like a musical play. I think everything is a possibility if the audience likes the experience and new dimensions of expression will emerge as we go along. Right now my focus is to be able to take these stories to the OTT space and hope they become interesting action-adventure movies.

To have nine Number 1 singles on the top of the global charts is an accomplishment. What effort went into it?

When I look back at being the first artist in the world to achieve nine number 1s in a year in Europe and then being awarded a world record gold disc for the same, it feels surreal, but I can never forget the effort of releasing a single every 45 days. I am so grateful for the discipline and training provided by my global agent, Martin Langford, and his team to achieve this consistently.

The selection of a clear genre of the song, then ensuring each song had the highest repeat listening value so that it played on thousands of radio stations globally multiple times in a day. Keeping costs at the lowest and discovering revenue models involved in the global music trade are all invaluable lessons that will help me get better in future music creations.

Not only have I learnt but we share our learnings through our foundation – GreatSong.World, with other talented Asian artists, who need to make a mark on the other side of the world. There are still miles to go but I am open to learning new things every day that help me in my quest to create unforgettable experiences for my audience.