Anu Malik was born Anwar Sardar Malik on 2 November 1960 in Mumbai. He comes from a family of musicians; his father, Sardar Malik, was a film composer active from the 1950s to the 1970s. He works as a music composer, singer and television judge.
He began as a music director in 1977 with Hunterwali 77, credited as Annu Malik. His first full soundtrack was Poonam (1981) and his first playback song came in 1983. His career rose in the 1990s, and he won the Filmfare Award for Best Music Director for Baazigar (1993) and again for Main Hoon Na (2004). Main Khiladi Tu Anari (1994) earned him a nomination.
He composed the war film Border (1997), whose song “Sandese Aate Hain”, sung by Sonu Nigam and Roop Kumar Rathod with lyrics by Javed Akhtar, remains widely played on patriotic occasions. For Refugee (2000) he received a Filmfare Special Award and the National Film Award for Best Music Direction.
He was a judge on Indian Idol from its first season in 2004. In October 2018, several women made allegations against him during the #MeToo movement, which he denied, and he left the judging panel.
His body of work is large and uneven, but his melodic songs from the 1990s remain among the most frequently replayed of the period.
Featured image: Anu Malik at an event, cropped from a group photo (cropped). Photo by Lens Naayak, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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