Tanya Shanker the eighteen-year-old budding singer from Bengaluru, released her latest single Phoenix, a pop-rock ballad about overcoming hurdles and obstacles on December 8. The song is an ode to fighters all across the world and people who turn “tragedies into their muse.”
Tanya started singing when she was seven, “I remember singing even as a child. My mum always makes this joke that she used to play music all the time while I was in her womb and that is how she says I fell in love with music.”
Her first single Thank You Mum came out in 2019 and garnered over 20k views in a week which helped kickstart her music career. She calls her mum her biggest inspiration behind her first album, “I would always notice the small things that my mum would do for me, and like any curious twelve-year-old I decided to write my first song on my mum.”
Her second single Be Yourself released in the same year is about following one’s passion and not giving in to peer pressure.
She attributed her success to a chance encounter in 2016 when she met her mentor and manager, Richard Andrew Dudley, the duo has been working together ever since.
She believes that her love for reading and writing has helped shape her music, “I believe when you consume other art, it allows you to be more creative.”
Tanya is also the lead singer for MOKSHA {{All Stars}}, the band for which she performs regularly and has toured many prominent cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Trivandrum and more.
Tanya remembers the exact moment she knew she wanted to perform for the rest of her life.
“I remember my first stage performance for school where I sang Cow Boy Take Me Away by The Chicks, I was so nervous standing on the stage in front of so many people, but that was the moment I realised this is what I want to do.”
Talking about her last single Phoenix, which she says is a song about rising through challenges in life, “It came out of a bunch of personal struggles that I was facing last year, there was this moment where I thought of giving up.”
“Ultimately, it is a song about resilience and bouncing back from all the difficulties that everyone faces. Getting up and telling myself that I can do this.”
Talking about her process of penning down lyrics, Tanya says that most of her songs come out of a place of, “deep self-reflection and rumination.”
“A lot of the times before I even sit to write a song, I have an idea what it is going to be about.”
For her music is like therapy, “When you produce something out of all the emotions that you feel, it is extremely cathartic.”
With her upcoming release Phoenix, a track that transcends international boundaries, featuring artists like BobbybeeBob and Manou Rao.
