Adnan Sami appears incredible in his new lean avatar. The crooner who recently completed 25 years in the industry is out with his next album to mark the occasion.

Conspicuous by his absence in Bollywood, Adnan has been quite active in South cinema last year. In a tête-a-tête with CS, the London-born musician opens his heart about the greatest loss of his life, profession and of course, fitness.

Personal upheavals
In the recent past, I faced a lot of troubles but they didn't really upset me. I think the loss of my father was so huge a tragedy for me that everything else dwarfed in front of it. 2009 was when it all started. But in my mind, they were small as I was dealing with this colossal loss of my own. In his memory, I even wrote a song on fathers because usually, we have songs dedicated to mothers.

First things first
I've ventured into genres I haven't been part of before. Like I composed a Sufi track for the first time. This particular album is very biographical as it reflects a lot of incidents that happened in my life. There is romance too with the first single dedicated to my wife Roya who came into my life at a point when my father passed away. She gave me the strength to smile again.

Bollywood again?
Over the last 13 years, I've been doing only Bollywood and independent music. One of the reasons why I wanted to take a break from Hindi films was that I needed to rejuvenate, so I started looking elsewhere.

And surprisingly, I found what I needed in South India! It's funny how I finally sung a Punjabi song for my album after singing in unfamiliar languages like Tamil, Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam. To make matters more humourous, I'm a Punjabi!


For fans only
I always say that an artist is nothing without the audience. To me, my fans matter a lot and I don't care much about opinion-makers. To give you an example, standing in front of a sold-out crowd in Wembley and hitting the notes on keyboard only to see the public go berserk - that is the ultimate high. They are singing your song back to you. That's what you live for.

Fitness mantra
As far as maintaining this 'figure' is concerned, I don't binge any longer. I nibble everything. I play a lot of squash. Not many know this but I won Abu Dhabi Squash Open once upon a time! I'm not a gym person because I find that boring. I prefer to play a competitive sport instead of hitting the treadmill.