KK No More: From a Salesman to Singer-Composer, 10 Lesser Known Facts About Krishnakumar Kunnath

The Indian music industry suffered another major blow as singer and composer Krishnakumar Kunnath, known by his stage name KK, breathed his last on Tuesday in Kolkata. The unfortunate news of his death came just a few days after the murder of renowned Punjabi singer Sidhu Moosewala. 53-year-old KK was performing at a college fest in the city. He reportedly fell ill after the concert and was declared dead at Kolkata’s CMRI hospital. KK was gifted with a mellifluous voice and even though he is no longer there, the singer will be remembered by his fans for many decades to come.KK’s music was an integral part of most of the ’90s kids’ lives.

Let’s look at some lesser-known facts about KK’s career:

1. KK worked in the hotel industry before moving to Mumbai in 1994 to pursue music. The singer often credited his wife Jyoti for her support to pursue his dreams
2. Initially, KK even took a sales job just to marry his lady love. However, after a couple of months, he got frustrated. With his wife and his father’s confidence and support, he quit the job and pursued music.
3. KK once revealed that he was spotted by Hariharan while he was singing in Delhi and the veteran singer had encouraged him to move to Mumbai.
4. KK was quite inspired by Kishore Kumar, and he was one of his initial influences.
5. KK was not a trained classical musician, though he visited a music school it was not something that he was cut out for so his father did not push him. In an interview with TOI, the singer shared that he used to learn a song by just simply listening to it. Later, when he got to know that Kishore Kumar had never learned music, he had all the more reasons to not go to a music class.

6. KK got his big break in the Bollywood industry with his debut album Pal. Now, before this opportunity, he sang over 3500 jingles for various advertisements.
7. KK’s debut song for Bollywood was Chod Aaye Hum Voh Galiyan for the film Maachis. His co-singers were Hariharan, Suresh Wadkar and Vinod Sehgal, the song was composed by Vishal Bhardwaj, and it ended up being a hit.
8. KK was not restricted to just Hindi songs. He sang in Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Bengali, Malayalam, Gujarati and Assamese, as well.
9. Despite being a successful musician, he was never seen on reality shows as a judge, except for once. He was one of the jury members on the television reality show Fame Gurukul, where Arijit Singh got his first brush with fame.
10. While KK’s music has got zero haters, and his songs have always been chartbusters, the singer was never really lucky with awards. Throughout his music career, he got 3-4 awards for his work.