Armaan Malik recalls how Salman Khan gave him a break in Bollywood break: ‘Just wanted to play our album for him’

Armaan Malik will compete in a decade in the music business next year. He launched himself as a singer with his self-titled album in 2014. That same year, he also got his playback singing break with Jai Ho. The singer shared that it was Salman Khan who liked one of his songs from his debut album and took it for his film Jai Ho. He and his brother, composer Amaal Malik, had approached the actor wanting to get feedback from him on the album. (Also read: Armaan Malik: You need to trust yourself enough)

In Jai Ho, Armaan sang the number Tumko Toh Aana Hi Tha. Before this, he had sung the song Bum Bum Bole in Taare Zameen Par in 2007 as a child artist. Since then, he has gone on to sing songs in Telugu, English, Bengali, Kannada, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Punjabi, Urdu and Malayalam. Armaan also collaborated with English singer Ed Sheeran on the song 2step in 2022. But it all began with Salman choosing his song for Jai Ho.

Speaking to Humans of Bombay on their YouTube channel, Armaan shared how a chance meeting with the actor led to a bigger break. He recalled, “Salman bhai came to launch my album in 2014. It was a self-titled album, Armaan. When we went to meet him, both Amaal and I, we just wanted to play our album for him. He said himself, ‘I’m going to come and launch this.'”

He continued, “We just wanted him to listen to it, probably share it. At that time, Twitter was very new, Insta was very new. We just wanted him to support it in whatever way. He went ahead and said I’ll come for the album launch. Then he went on to remove one of the songs from the album and put it in Jai Ho, his movie. That gave me my Bollywood debut as an adult playback singer.”

Last year, he also shared with Hindustan Times why he wanted to pursue more avenues in music other than film songs. He had said, “But there was a point when I wanted to express myself through my music. That’s when I decided to take a flight to LA, put a pause on everything else and just concentrate on making music that I wanted to make. That conviction, sometimes has to come from within yourself. You need to trust yourself enough to know you are making the right decision for yourself. That’s what I did.”