On a recent afternoon in Singapore, playback singer and composer Shakthisree Gopalan, 37, fell quietly in love with a simple local delicacy: a fragrant cup of pandan tea paired with crisp kaya toast.
One cup was not enough; taken by the comfort of the blend, she immediately asked for a second.
The blueprint: From designing to singing under A.R. Rahman
An instinct to build welcoming spaces comes naturally to her. Long before her soulful voice became a mainstay of Indian cinema, Shakthisree was drawing blueprints.
The architecture graduate’s deepest ambition was to study acoustic design and understand how sound breathes inside physical structures.
When A.R. Rahman was looking for an architect to build his KM Music Conservatory; she found herself in the unique position of designing a campus for the maestro. She recalls pouring all her own student dreams into those blueprints, looking at the completed building as a samarpanam (an offering) to her mentor.
“Even now when I visit, it fills my heart to hear students talk about where they sit to compose and share their special memories around campus,” she said. “Designing that space was about building a home for music.”
The Doorway of ‘Nenjukkule’
That spatial sensitivity transferred effortlessly into her singing. When she broke through with “Nenjukkule” for Rahman’s Kadal in 2013, she brought a quiet, interior tenderness to the track. A.R. Rahman’s direction to her had been simple: the song was purely about unadulterated love.
More than a decade later, her bond with her debut track remains untouched by time.
In an exclusive recent interview with Tamil Murasu, she was asked if her connection to the song has shifted amid her growing discography. Her reply was instant: that it will not change, “Ippothum, eppothum, ennaikum“ (Now, always, forever).
She speaks warmly of its poetic Tamil lyrics, which describe a village settling into sleep, from birds in the trees to curd setting in jars, while a love-struck maiden lies awake.
“’Nenjukkule’ wasn’t just a moment,” she shared. “It was a door that opened up a world of possibilities that made my dreams a reality.”
Stepping into the Composer’s Chair
Shakthisree’s creative canvas expanded further in 2025 when she made her debut as a film composer for Netflix’s thriller Test, starring Madhavan, Nayanthara, and Siddharth. Stepping into the composer’s chair required a complete shift in perspective. Where playback singing allowed her to invent private visuals in her mind, scoring required her to respond to the director’s frames on screen. Reading the script, she was so gripped by the suspense of the final pages that she found herself standing up.
Working alongside director S. Sashikanth and recording live scores with the Budapest Orchestra, she learned to navigate the subtle art of audience perception – utilising melody as a tool to travel the arc of how viewers feel about a character’s evolution from the first half of a film to the second.
Independent Songs as Diary Entries
Where film scoring means stepping into someone else’s script, her independent music, blending pop, jazz, trip-hop, and R&B, remains entirely her own story. Formerly fronting bands like Off the Record and The Pyjama Conspiracy, she considers her independent songs a living archive.
“In cinema, you are roleplaying different characters,” she noted. “In independent music, you are the character. It’s like a diary entry or a time capsule that allows me to know myself even more deeply.”
Fans Will Have To Wait For Another Opportunity
She hoped to bring candid vulnerability and energy to the Capitol Theatre, where she was due to perform on Aug 29, but the show, Nenjukkule - Live in Singapore with Shakthisree Gopalan, is cancelled.
The partner for the event, Soirée Singapore is an all-women team focused on curating close-knit cultural experiences who had previously brought singer Chinmayi to Singapore. “It is so rare to see an all-women team running an event organisation,” Shakthisree noted. “Connecting with these passionate, like-minded women along the way has been a wonderful part of this journey.”
Update: All ticket holders will be refunded in full through SISTIC by Soirée Singapore. Further details can be found on their Instagram page.
