Singer Ananya is rewriting Telugu pop, one romantic melody at a time!

Honestly, I just sat down with the intention of writing a new feel-good R&B love song and the melody came to me first — the story built itself on top of it. That’s usually how my songwriting process works; the melody informs the story. I always knew I wanted to bring more female-led representation into Telugu stories and Telugu music specifically. With the Indian film industry being the primary place people find Indian music, songs tend to be male-centric because Indian films are largely male-centric. So, being the hopeless romantic I am, I wanted to write a summer love song that captured a woman’s experience of falling in love — written by women, since most Indian music is written by men, even when it’s sung by women or from a female perspective. I wanted the song to be in my mother tongue, but to equally carry the western musical influence I grew up with in the USA. I also wanted it to have a universal enough sound that people who don’t understand the language can still enjoy it. The music video leans into western film influence while still playing on Tollywood romance nostalgia.

I’ve always had melodies flying around in my head and I’ve attempted writing lyrics since I was little, but I took the idea of original music more seriously in tenth grade, when I was 15. I didn’t put out my first full-fledged song, though, until I was 21.

What a whirlwind it’s been. My parents put me in carnatic music classes when I was four, but I hated practising, so I did that and off until high school, then took it up seriously in college and am continuing with it. In school, I was in every choir possible — that was my only way of keeping my passion for singing alive. I also began training in Tollywood light music in seventh grade and kept that going for a few years. In college, I performed with an Indian-American band I started with a couple of friends and recently picked up R&B vocal lessons to improve my western skill set. I also minored in Music Tech in college because I really wanted to learn how to make my own music in a more formal setting. I started creating covers around the age of 15 and had been doing that ever since, but stopped in the last year to focus on my original work.

I think it’s growing now more than ever and I couldn’t be happier. When I set out on this journey to create original music at 15, I was upset at how few Telugu indie songs there were. I loved artistes like Mickey Singh and Arjun, but I didn’t see anyone like that for Telugu music — especially not diaspora Telugu folks. I listened to the Telugu Indie playlist and fell in love with the work of the few artistes creating independent music back then. Now, with music creation being more accessible and singers wanting to express their own original ideas, I’m seeing a massive rise in independent Telugu music. It’s an exciting time — fitting, too, that the vision I had seven years back is manifesting just as the market is changing and demand for independent music is rising. I was always told no one cares enough about Telugu indie and that people only listen to Tollywood music. I always felt strongly against that. People are finally waking up and creating independently and so many more people are listening now — and that’s beautiful.

First, my team and I want to drop an acoustic version of Telusa, then I’ll most definitely have another single out before the end of the year — if not two.

Telusa is now streaming on all audio platforms and YouTube.