Jonita Gandhi on the pressure that comes with being a 'social influencer'
'The Break-up Song' singer Jonita Gandhi: Have to keep upping your game
I didn't know till a while ago that The Break-up Song was part of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. In playback, you never know till the last minute,” says cover queen Jonita Gandhi, a Punjabi born in Delhi and settled near Toronto. “My dad used to make videos on phone, and then we shifted to DSLR camera. They were raw, organic covers. I never wanted to be a singer. But, then, it clicked,” says the 25-year-old, who has over 500 thousand followers on Facebook, 18,000 on Twitter, and 29,000 on Instagram.
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Her first successful video was Pani Da Rang from Vicky Donor (2012). Jonita then started making videos of cover songs professionally and moved to India to try playback. “You think you can come here, sing one song, and then die peacefully. But once you do that, you want to keep doing that,” she says.
Jonita stepped into Bollywood with Chennai Express (2013), and has worked with Salim-Sulaiman and AR Rahman. She is part of Rahman’s band. “He is the dude. He was showing me Periscope once, and I asked what’s that. He said, ‘Aren’t you on it? Aren’t you on it? Aren’t you on everything?’” she laughs. But being a social media star is tough, says Jonita, although she has a slight edge since she began before the term ‘social influencer’ was coined. “People call me a pioneer in the social media scene, but now every second person is doing this, and you have to keep upping your game. One bad day can bring you down,” she says.
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