Dhruv emerged into the international music scene in 2019 after his single ‘double take’ went viral. His music career has been skyrocketing since, having released his debut album ‘Private Blizzard’, toured multiple parts of the world and performed live on US and UK television at Jimmy Kimmel and Jools Holland in a matter of a year. We spoke to the London-born, Singapore-raised creative of Indian descent at the end of 2024 about how his multicultural upbringing impacted his music likings, how writing his debut album helped him untie the knots in his head and how he used his obsession with Amy Winehouse to train his singing voice early on.
Growing up, Dhruv remembers listening to Bollywood music at his grandmother’s house and thoroughly enjoying what he was hearing: “I would say that’s my biggest memory. I don’t really have anybody in my family who is in the arts or in music or anything like that, so it was mostly going to the movie theatre and watching these Bollywood movies with amazing soundtracks that got me interested in writing songs in the first place.” A significant memory from when he was older includes Adele, Amy Winehouse, and Grammy compilation CDs. “I remember when they were both coming up and being obsessed with trying to sing like Amy Winehouse, which is really funny, because, obviously, it’s impossible to do so,”, Dhruv chuckles and continues, “I was obsessed with especially British soul music at that time, Duffy was also kind of big. I don’t think I truly understood what those words meant, but I could feel that it had something.”
The 25-year-old artist always knew he wanted to pursue music but “when you grow up in a country like Singapore, it’s so far from everything”. So he decided to go to Yale instead and “do something practical as a major. But then I spent, honestly, most of the time working on music” – and he dropped out. Dhruv is constantly inspired by the world around him and says he is “not a good fictional songwriter” as he is “not good at hypothetical situations”. “It’s more for me, it’s all about trying things in speech through music,”, he explains. His songwriting process is simple but for ‘Private Blizzard’ he added a twist: “99% of the time, I start with a melody, and that’s usually after messing around with chord progressions, but then for a couple of songs, especially my recent album, I’ve started with lyrics where I knew I wanted to put them into a song.” An artist that Dhruv has been looking up to “since childhood” regarding not just her vocal abilities but also her lyricism is Amy Winehouse: “She has been a big influence of mine, and it’s carried all the way up till now. I think she just has a way of weaving poetry into music that feels very accessible. I would say the same about SZA as well.” His favourite Winehouse song, for those wondering, is ‘Wake Up Alone’ on ‘Back To Black’.
For ‘Private Blizzard’, recorded in Nashville with Grammy- nominated producer JT Daly (Noah Kahan, Benson Boone, etc.), Dhruv’s goal was to express, to others as well as to himself, what he was going through and how he was feeling: “I had this emerging theme of thinking music. It was like trying to untie the knots in my head, and it doesn’t really cover a very pleasant period of my life, but I think it tries to unpack why I was feeling certain ways, why I was feeling numb, and maybe that’s all part of being 23, 24 and 25.” He points out that ‘How?’ was a specifically hard song for him to write: “I’m a very fortunate person to have had music from my first mixtape go viral and become really successful, but I found the experience of trying to follow up, or not only to recreate virality but, just in the wake of it, trying to figure out how to make music certainly difficult. That’s what the song is about. I wrote a sample which took a lot of revisions.” His favourite song on the album right now is ‘One and Only’ – “It’s the one that I like to listen to the most because it’s just so optimistic and joyful and like a physical manifestation!”
Dhruv focused heavily on improving and developing his vocal range for this project, training his voice for live performances and beyond: “It’s weird because I feel like when I was younger, I put in all these hours of work into songwriting and the craft of writing, and never really thought about being on a stage. And then when I had my first tour, I realised, ‘Oh my god, I’m not anywhere near where I want to be vocally and my vocal endurance is being tested right now, singing night after night’. I put like 10,000 hours into just learning the craft of singing, and it’s still challenging because my voice is naturally quite low. So for me, it’s significantly harder to be able to have those lows and also have very high notes as well. I’ve been working at it pretty diligently over the last year and a half.”
Compared to past performances, the singer also feels more confident these days regarding his stage persona: “I used to kind of just stumble onto the stage and hope that I wouldn’t mess up and be exposed as an imposter, I used to be really worried about that. And obviously, I used to practice, but I was not thinking about the right thing. Now I’m much more diligent and think about staging, about having a movie on stage. I think about how I can interact with the audience. I practised every day for a month.”
Right before a show, Dhruv prefers to have his peace and to pep-talk himself into not taking everything too seriously: “I just like to be alone usually, just in my own head. I don’t really talk, not in a rude way, but I just don’t talk to people because I try to get into the zone. I listen to music sometimes, and then right before I go on stage, I remind myself that it’s always supposed to be fun and about putting on as good of a show as possible. And that doesn’t necessarily mean being perfect, it means having fun!”
Out of all the live performances he has done so far, there is one certain show that will stick with him forever – the show he did in India. “It’s one thing to perform for other people, but it’s something else to perform for people in your family who have watched you write music since you were a kid. I got to perform in front of my grandmother, and it was hard to imagine that she would ever see a show, living in India. For touring, the infrastructure in India isn’t necessarily as accessible, but somehow we managed to make it work,”, he smiles fondly while sharing.
In 2024, Dhruv’s highlight was touring Europe as a support for Jordan Rakei and getting to explore places he has never been to before. “I loved Europe in general, not even necessarily because of the music. The music was obviously super fun, but I had never been to most of those countries and cities before, and to experience them through the lens of music was really interesting. You know, waking up, getting a coffee in a new city, walking around town, and then doing a show and going to the next city in the next country. That was a very special experience for me. I’m not a big traveller, so it was nice to see so many new countries and new cities and compare them.” His favourite city (so far) is Copenhagen – “I’m not gonna lie, I really, really loved it!”
In January 2025, Dhruv kicked off his own headline tour in the US, Europe and the UK. His vulnerability and eloquence, in written as well as in spoken form, is rare and refreshing in a time where “brain rot” was named as Oxford’s word of the year, and his mix of cultures as well as sounds make him a thoroughly intriguing act to look out for. We are excited to see what the future has in store for Dhruv but we are certain he never has to go back to Yale.
Written by Vicky Madzak // Photography by Stefan Kohli
GEM Magazine 