Shilpa Natarajan

Shilpa Natarajan is an Indian acoustic singer, vocal instructor, and songwriter from Chennai. She is also a music presenter on Chennai Live 104.8 FM, based in Chennai, where she hosts the show ‘Live Café.’ She has been experimenting with acoustic covers, indie-pop, and the indie-folk genre.

She loves experimenting with music which is a fusion of different genres. Shilpa’s schooling was in Vidya Mandir Senior Secondary School, near Mylapore in Chennai. She graduated in Sociology from the University of Madras and did an MBA in Communications Management with specialization in Public Relations, Events, and Corporate Communication.

Born in a family of music enthusiasts, Shilpa started learning Carnatic music at the age of three and has had a long connection with classical music, which she has described as an “on and off ” relationship, attributing to the interruptions in her classical music lessons. Her first guru was her mother, Maheshwari Natarajan.

As she grew up, she developed a keen interest in British and American music and later, started following the music across a wide variety of genres. After completing her MBA, Natarajan started working with the corporate Murugappa group. During the weekends she used to work on her music. Shilpa’s inroad to the singing industry, or to be specific, to the Tamil music industry came in 2008 as a participant of ‘Airtel Super Singer-Season 1’. In the same year, she got an opportunity to sing the title track for a Tamil TV serial ‘Puriyadha Pudhir.’

In the beginning, Shilpa used to work on jingles and demo tracks for music composers. Then through friends, she was introduced to music composer Girishh Gopalakrishnan, who gave her the opportunity to sing a song for the film ‘ Marina Click to look into! >> Read More... .’ She also sang a song composed by Vishal Chandrashekhar, for the movie ‘Hi da.’ Shilpa’s voice grabbed the limelight in the Tamil music industry as she sung for Disney Tamil and Nickelodeon and also gave voiceovers in dubbed animated movies such as Lion King 3 and Peter Pan Story soon >> Read More... . She did a lot of collaborations with independent singers and performed at The Metroplus Theatre Festival and Short & Sweet Festival in collaboration with ‘Strayfactory.’ Music directors like A.R. Rahman, Illaiyaraja, and Amit Trivedi Amit Rivedi is a phenomenal musician of the Bollyw >> Read More... are Natarajan’s idols.

Shilpa moved to writing her songs in 2011 with her singles ‘Yenakku nee Sondhama’ and ‘Shadow on your Wall.’ Lately, Shilpa has been working on her three-piece acoustical band ‘Under the Rest’, and with ‘The Beef Sappad Trio’ which is a parody act based in Chennai. She has also released an extended play(EP) in 2017 named ‘Bubble wrap.’ The EP consists of seven songs out of which five are in English, and two are in Tamil.

With so much going on, she also manages to take out time to teach music to kids. She is also a music instructor in three schools. All this said, Shilpa has become a known name in the music industry, and her voice has established a stronghold in the Tamil industry.