Darshan Raval: Social media helps me understand what my fans want

For composer-singer Darshan Raval, making music is a very “personal experience”, but he agrees that his fans definitely inspire his music. His latest single, Baarishon Mein, is a heartbreak song, a genre that he wanted to distance from. “Social media helps me understand what my fans want. I’d planned to not do sad songs, but since my fans were requesting for it for six months, I did one this monsoon,” says Raval, who feels social media is an important medium in the current times.

He continues, “Social media helps me connect with my fans every day and I love doing that. During the Covid-19 phase, I was able to spend more time with them. I take to social media to share things straight from my heart and I like listening to my fans. It’s also a great platform to share my songs with my fans.”

But the 27-year-old accepts that social media has a downside too. And for him, the negative impact of social media is related to food! “Whenever I go out to eat, a lot of people gather and it becomes difficult to eat. So, I have to skip the street food that I used to relish before because everyone now recognises me because of social media,” Raval laughs.

Meanwhile, the singer-composer, who’s spent almost eight years in Bollywood, has also been releasing independent music simultaneously. Ask if film songs like Chogada (Loveyatri; 2018) and Kamariya (Mitron; 2018) took him to the next level and the musician shares, “Any song, irrespective of whether it’s a single or film song, has to work with the audience. For instance, my song Tera Zikr was not a film song, but it took me to the next level. On the other hand, I have sung tracks in films that nobody even knows. I feel only a good song works.”