MISS POOJA

Miss Pooja is an Indian singer and actress recognised as one of the most prolific and commercially successful female performers in modern Punjabi music. Born Gurinder Kaur Kainth in Rajpura, Punjab, she trained formally in vocal and instrumental music, completed postgraduate studies in music and worked as a teacher before beginning her professional recording career. She made her breakthrough in 2006 with the duet “Jaan Ton Piyari.” At a time when the traditional male-female Punjabi duet format had lost some of its mainstream visibility, Miss Pooja helped bring it back into popular circulation. She recorded with a large number of male Punjabi singers, becoming widely known as the “Queen of Duets” through her distinctive high-register voice, energetic delivery and extraordinary rate of releases. Her early career was built through Punjabi folk and bhangra recordings dealing with romance, courtship, village life, pride and relationships. Rather than remaining attached to one producer or duet partner, she worked across numerous independent labels and regional recording projects. This unusually broad collaborative catalogue made her voice a constant presence within Punjabi music in India and among Punjabi communities abroad. Miss Pooja established herself as a solo performer with the album Romantic Jatt in 2009. The release included songs such as “Do Nain” and demonstrated that she could carry a full project outside the duet format. Romantic Jatt received international recognition, while Miss Pooja won awards including Best International Act and Best International Album at the UK Asian Music Awards. Her later albums and singles expanded her music beyond traditional Punjabi folk and bhangra into Punjabi pop, dance music, hip-hop-influenced production and commercial Indian film music. Releases including Jattitude and songs such as “Sohnea,” “Date on Ford,” “Painkiller” and “Fishcut” continued her success with both domestic and international Punjabi audiences. Miss Pooja also entered Bollywood playback singing. One of her most widely recognised Hindi-film appearances was “Second Hand Jawaani” from the 2012 film Cocktail. She subsequently contributed to films including Dilliwali Zaalim Girlfriend and Housefull 3, bringing her Punjabi vocal style into mainstream Hindi cinema. Alongside singing, she has worked as an actress in Punjabi films including Panjaban, Channa Sachi Muchi, Pooja Kiven Aa and Ishq Garaari. She has also appeared on television and served as a judge on the Punjabi singing competition Voice of Punjab. Across an exceptionally large catalogue of solo songs, duets, albums, film recordings and international performances, Miss Pooja has become closely associated with the modern Punjabi duet tradition. Her career connects Punjabi folk music with bhangra, pop and contemporary dance production, while her volume of collaborations helped introduce numerous emerging male vocalists to wider audiences.