Lata Mangeshkar

Imagine a pop singer who not only sustains a career more than 50 years, one strewn with smash hits and accolades, but whose otherworldly, preternaturally expressive voice makes her a kind of symbol of her country's national identity, and you begin to get an idea of Lata Mangeshkar's importance to her Indian homeland. The "playback singer" to whom countless Bollywood stars have lip-synched, Mangeshkar is said to have recorded more than 30,000 songs in 20 languages; that said, pulling together her Basics was a daunting task, but we've given it our all, spotlighting everything from "Aa Ja Re Pardesi," which won Mangeshkar her first Playback Award, to "Aye Mere Watan Ke," a patriotic song performed for Indian Prime Minister Nehru that, reportedly, brought him to tears.

More of Lata Mangeshkar's quintessentially Indian music awaits in Next Steps.

Listen to "Aayega Aanewala," and it's easy to hear how the 1949 track, recorded for the movie Mahal, took India by storm and made Lata Mangeshkar a superstar. In a film about reincarnation and the supernatural world, Mangeshkar's voice — light as air, liquid as water, brimming with emotion — comes off less as a human instrument than as some benevolent force from another world. Indian film icon Raj Kapoor agreed: decades later, regarding the singer as nothing less than an incarnation of the goddess Saraswati, Kapoor based an entire film on her persona — the knockout title track, "Satyam Shivam Sundaram," shows why.

The voice of Lata Mangeshkar sings on, in Deep Cuts.

The modern song "Jiya Jale," written by composer A.R. Rahman, may not be the most typical example of Lata Mangeshkar's staggering body of work, but by the late '90s, when the track was recorded, the singer had become quite selective about her material, and her excitement at taking on something new and different radiates from her performance. Rahman would go on to win an Oscar® for his soundtrack to Slumdog Millionaire, but no doubt he was equally thrilled to work with an Indian living legend, one whose vocal presence could elevate a film — such as Patita, with its popular number "Kisi Ne Apana Bana Ke" — from also-ran to hit.

She was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the single-most-recorded artist in the world. She won so many coveted Filmfare Awards that eventually she stepped aside to give others a chance. The only person who comes close to her success is her sister, Asha Bhosle. A star in her homeland unlike anyone anywhere else in the world, Indian playback singer Lata Mangeshkar is an artist with a supple yet forceful voice of seemingly limitless expressive power — she could capture both purity and ruined innocence in a single song (the smash hit "Chalo Dildar Chalo") and bounce back from a life- and career-threatening illness with one of the most important recordings of her repertoire, the intricate "Kahin Deep Jale Kahin." Our Lata Mangeshkar Essentials humbly attempts to distill the finest moments of a career, spanning more than 50 years, that may never be matched again.