GOLD

Long before 2026’s GOLD, Damini Bhatla was a voice for hire. The Carnatic-trained singer from Hyderabad has lent her pipes—just as her sister Mounima has done—to some of Telugu cinema’s biggest soundtracks, including 2015 fantasy actioner Baahubali which was before she’d even finished her music degree. More recently, though, that same disciplined voice has focused on independent music, with singles like “Midnight”, “Raathire” and “Premalekha” crossing South Indian classical textures with pop and R&B. GOLD, Bhatla’s debut full-length, is the sum of the fiercely independent, genre-blending instincts the artist has been honing. Two years in the making, it began with an exploration of self-discovery during a difficult period alongside a single image that just wouldn’t leave her. She tells Apple Music: “I had a vivid imagination of liquid gold in my mind and saw parallels between gold and a woman’s journey. A woman is not just born. A woman is made. Melted down, mixed with other metals, hammered, shaped, polished, valued and becomes precious.” Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, English and Kashmiri languages all feature across GOLD’s eight tracks (each also represented by an instrumental version). Nadaswaram, mridangam and Carnatic vocal lines run through the various musical styles— contemporary pop, R&B, neo-soul and alt-rock—expressing lyrics that tackle themes from sisterhood to sensuality, heartbreak, intergenerational trauma and power. It’s also, notably, a record built on collaboration as much as introspection, pulling in voices Bhatla has long admired, from pop artist Shalmali Kholgade and Kashmiri hip-hop ace Ahmer to producer 30KEY!. Here, Bhatla takes us through GOLD, track by track. “Intro - Who are you?” “This is the opening breath of the record. But I worked on this track at the end of making the album. I reached out to my producer friend Anoh [Anohnymouss] and we worked on this track online. I had already created the arrangement and chords, so technically this is my first co-produced track. It’s built on a sweeping violin and a layered vocal arrangement that felt to me like a congregation waking up, with nadaswaram and strings running underneath and the mridangam coming in like a kick drum. It arrives the way a memory does. The key line is ‘Inthaki Nuvvu Evaru?’, meaning ‘After all, who are you?’ It’s holding a mirror in front of you. I wanted the album to open on a question with no answer yet, because that’s honest. Before you become gold, you have to sit with what you’re actually made of. Everything is still possible at this point.” “Ramba Urvasi Menaka” “This is the most purely joyful song on the record. It was like friends coming together to do a team project at school. It started with my topline, which I wrote while driving in Hyderabad. I borrowed the names of Rambha, Urvashi and Menaka—the three most celebrated apsaras [celestial nymphs] in Hindu mythology. I then reached out to Manisha Eerabathini to write some English lines for the diaspora queens. She knocked it out of the park. Later, I sent it to my bassist friend, Michael Timothy, and gave him a brief: It’s a tribute to the divine feminine, make it powerful! He set traditional South Indian rhythm against modern hip-hop production, 808s and his live, slapping bass. “Once the production was locked, I wanted a rapper to come and fire some bars. My good friend Sharin recommended I ask Pho. I was like—oh yes! I love what she did on ‘Dunya’ by Ahmer and Pho. She sent her verse twice—by mistake, she sent me another song’s files the first time. After all three of us recorded, it sounded whole and celebratory. The line is 'Neeku nuvvu kaanuka'—’you yourself are the gift’. I placed this early on purpose. Sisterhood is part of the forge, so I wanted that collective heat lit before the album goes inward.” “Seethakaalam - Side A” “This one started with my A&R, Ranbir Kapoor. He said, ‘Let’s give this song a second side—bring in [singer-songwriter and composer] Rishi Roy, make it more commercial, get a Punjabi voice on a Telugu track.’ We already had ‘Side B’ and that verse was more spoken, more rap-forward. So ‘Side A’ needed to be the opposite—something melodic. Rishi jumped on it completely, sang his section and helped shape the production on his part too, which I loved. ‘Seethakaalam’ means winter. It’s the quiet unravelling of a love that used to feel safe—not dramatic heartbreak but the ordinary, devastating kind, where two people still feel everything and just can’t reach each other any more. “‘You and Me dhooraaniki vantheney ledhu / You and Me mounaaniki maatale levu’ — ‘for the distance between us there’s no bridge now, for the silence between us there are no words now.’ But there’s a line Rishi sings, ‘Dhoop ke pehle kiran’—‘the first ray before the sunrise’. That’s what he’s looking for and I’m that. Even inside the ache, there’s one flicker of light. This is the rawest wound on the record. It’s gold sitting in the fire before it’s been through it.” “Say You Want Me” “It started as a songwriting exercise with no pressure, just me writing over a beat I found on YouTube. What came out struck a chord immediately and the chorus arrived simple and essential—’Take my body, take my soul, say my name, say you want me.’ It came so naturally that it actually surprised me. This was the first time I’d ever written a full song in English. I sent it straight to Shalmali Kholgade. She’s been an inspiration to me for a long time—she has a song called ‘Love You Double’ that I love—and the second I finished writing this, I knew it needed to be sung by her. I reached out, she loved it instantly and we started recording. “We ended up recording it at least three times over two years, the production going back and forth the whole way until we finally decided to bring in live instruments—ZIA [Zafar] on keys, Michael Timothy on bass and my A&R Ranbir ‘kpr’ Kapoor on drums—to give it the warmth and R&B feels it needed. I wanted one song on this record where desire gets to speak in plain English with no metaphor to hide behind. This is a woman naming exactly what she wants, on her own terms, without apology. ‘So you gotta thread this carefully—claim me now or watch me flee.’ To me, a woman’s journey isn’t complete without her sensuality and her right to ask for what she wants, openly and with consent as the given.” “Chinna Maata” “This one goes way back to June 2024. I jammed it out on guitar with my friend Baidurjya Banerjee and I wrote the melody first before there were any words to it. Then I went straight to a lyricist because I needed help finishing it. I reached out to Swaroop Goli, who has been writing incredible songs for Telugu films. He comes from an indie background and is so deeply rooted in Telugu culture. He wrote this hook line that just floored me—the way you look at people is the way you are. ‘Choosey choopullone edho unde antha vinthe’—in just the gaze of looking, there is something, all wonder. It’s all about perception. “‘Chinna Maata’ means ‘a small word’ in Telugu and this is my message to everyone who looks at a woman, or really anybody, on the internet who jumps straight to conclusions, shames her, calls her out. It’s more playful and philosophical than anything else GOLD—a tree teaching birds to fly, God sitting equally in us and in stone, soil growing both crop and weed. In the middle of the track, there is a sample of [lyricist] Swaroop Goli reciting an old Telugu sonnet from a newspaper. The author is Ismail. And we do not have more information about that person. I would love to do some R&D and find out who he is. Musically, we did extensive work on this track. My producer Yanchan played the mridangam, ghatam and kanjeera. I connected with Matt Gudgeon, who I performed with in Australia back in 2017; Matt played guitars on this track.” “Ethili Neeye” “This one started with the melody and it was a hard melody to write—I sat with it for a long time. I reached out to a couple of Tamil lyricists before Naveen Bharathi came on and said he wanted to write it around feminism. I knew I wanted this track to be about intergenerational trauma, a conversation between a past version of me and a present version—’ethili’, the refugee, the one who fled, and ‘poridu’, the survivor, the fighter. Both are me. Both were necessary. “I discovered Lilhelp through his Apple Music live sessions and reached out. He produced the track and I brought in Baidurjya to play numerous guitar layers on it. Then, after almost a year of living with it, Ranbir said he wanted to add live drums of his own and push the sound closer to the band Evanescence. This is the most emotionally exposed track on the record and honestly it’s what makes my album complete. This is a conversation between two versions of the same woman. My past self asks the questions, doubts, feels shackled and finds it harder to fulfil her dreams. My present self answers with earned tenderness, empowerment, success and healing. She’s now gold!” “Seethakaalam - Side B” “Let me be clear about this one: Side B is the OG. Back in 2024, it started with a melody I wrote on a YouTube beat and I couldn’t get it out of my head for days. I tried working the song with a few different producers before 30KEY!’s production finally sounded exactly right—pop, global, the kind of thing that makes everyone bop their head. “I asked a friend of mine in A&R [Srishti] if she could put me in touch with Ahmer, because his song ‘Duniya’ was my favourite at the time and I’m a huge fan of his voice. He wrote something beautiful and the song came together in no time. That’s the OG of ‘Seethakaalam - Side A’ with Rishi coming into the picture later. If ‘Side A’ sits in winter, ‘Side B’ is the pivot into monsoon, and my bridge talks about how spring never arrives all at once, it just sneaks up on you before you notice. Ahmer’s Kashmiri verse carries that particular bittersweetness of beauty that exists inside harshness. ‘Chalte, rehte, maange, tum ko, jaise baarish ki boondhe humpe khud ko tu barsaale.’ It's quieter than that—a woman who doesn’t forget what happened to her but blossoms anyway. Gold that’s weathered the fire without rusting.” “Outro – You be you” “This one is basically me ranting, preaching and just spitting out the facts. It’s a spoken-word track, produced by Pina Colada Blues—I told him I wanted it to sound like Finneas and Billie Eilish, and we joked that we were Finneas and Billie for the day. The song is about deciding what you want to do with your life and defining it on your own terms. Your timeline is yours. Don’t compare yourself to anybody. Don’t let go of your integrity. ‘Nuvu neela undu, nenu naala unta. Nuvvu neela undaleka, nannu naala undaneekunda—em saadhisthaav?’ You be you, I’ll be myself. If you’re not being yourself and you won’t let me be myself either, what’s the point? Why are you even doing this? That’s the closing question and it doesn’t need an answer. The woman who opened this album asking ‘Who are you?’ ends it by not needing to ask any more.”