Singer-songwriter Prateek Kuhad Performs Live

Prateek Kuhad
( Photo courtesy of the artist )

[music]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It from WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. The singer-songwriter Prateek Kuhad grew up in Jaipur, India, and became a New Yorker in his teens when he enrolled at NYU to major in Math. His major breakthrough came around 2019 when a single of his landed on former President Barack Obama's annual music playlist after receiving millions of streams. The track was called Cold/Mess.

[music: Cold/Mess by Prateek Kuhad]

I wish I could leave you my love

But my heart, is a mess

My days they begin with your name

And nights end with your breath

With your breath

Alison Stewart: Kuhad had since amassed a fan base in both the United States and India, and toured venues from Europe to Singapore and just this week, he played Brooklyn. This month he released a Deluxe version of his 2022 album The Way That Lovers Do. He joins me now live in WNYC Studio 5, and he has a guitar. Prateek, welcome.

Prateek Kuhad: Hi. Thank you for having me.

Alison Stewart: Would you start us off with a song?

Prateek Kuhad: Yes, for sure. I want to play something from this Deluxe called All I Need

[music: All I Need by Prateek Kuhad]

Would you break away

If I tied my heartstrings to you, baby?

And every day

I wanna see your perfect body right beside me, baby

I want you to know that I did try

To open your heart and break in inside

I want you to know that I believe

I'd heal all your wounds and take all your tears

'Cause, baby, you're all I need

Do you believe?

I wanna love you like the storm that lives inside me, baby

Pull me deep in your sea

I wanna swim through your veins

I wanna move through you, baby

I want you to know that I did try

To open your heart and break in inside

I want you to know that I believe

I'd heal all your wounds and take all your tears

'Cause, baby, you're all I need

Baby, you're all I need

Yeah, baby, you're all I need

I want you to know that I did try

To open your heart and break in inside

I want you to know that I believe

I'd heal all your wounds and take all your tears

'Cause, baby, you're all I need

Baby, you're all I need

Baby, you're All I need

And I could be all you need

Alison Stewart: That was Prateek Kuhad. That is from the album The Way That Lovers Do. When did you write that song, Prateek?

Prateek Kuhad: This one, I think it was the summer of 2019 actually.

Alison Stewart: Did you sit down to write a love song?

Prateek Kuhad: I almost never sit down with a purpose to write about any particular thing or idea. I just sit down, I start writing, and just see where the song really takes me versus anything else.

Alison Stewart: I read somewhere in one of the interviews that you were in the studio for 70 days working on The Way That Lovers Do. That was in Seattle?

Prateek Kuhad: Yes. That's right.

Alison Stewart: All right. Tell me what you did in that 70 days.

Prateek Kuhad: A lot of recording. Mainly just a lot of recording. I'd written the songs already. I usually just write all the time in the sense that I'll take breaks for a week or two weeks, but I'm pretty much whether I'm traveling, whether I'm touring, whether I'm at home, I just write whenever I feel like really writing, and that's how I build a collection of songs. Leading up to studio time in Seattle, we were just working on demos and stuff back in India, and then Seattle, that 70 days, 67 days out that we spent there was just dragging stuff, doing a lot of workouts, just lots and lots of production. Every day was like 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM.

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Prateek Kuhad: Six days a week, nonstop.

Alison Stewart: Were you just recording an enormous amount of material and then you would go back and decide and curate or had you come in with a certain number of songs and you just wanted to get them perfect?

Prateek Kuhad: A bit of both, I would say. We did about like, I want to say 16 to 18 songs, and then I ended up putting out only 11. There was some that-- I'd plan to do more actually. I came with a good 20, 25 songs, ended up recording that many, and then leaving out a few but yes, it was a bit of both because any song that we approached, it was always like let's get it as close to perfect, at least in my idea of perfection as possible and then move on to the next one.

Alison Stewart: With this new Deluxe record, what do we hear, what do we get on the Deluxe record?

Prateek Kuhad: On the Deluxe record is a few of these songs, these extra songs that I just talked about. Hopelessly and I Never Knew, those are two songs which we did not put out last year with the main album release. Then I've been just touring with my band from India a lot, all of last year. We worked on these acoustic versions of a few songs, which are stripped down just like guitar and piano. Some of them have drums, some don't, just more chilled-out versions of some of the songs. There's five acoustic versions, and then there's a feature by this artist called Raveena, who's a singer-songwriter from here, from the States. She did with us on one of the songs from last year called Bloom.

Alison Stewart: I think we pulled that. Let's take a listen.

[music: Bloom by Prateek Kuhad featuring Raveena]

'Cause I don't have your eyes to stare into

I dare you to compare your embrace to anywhere

I still need you, I don't care

Don't you know? I've been on my own far too long

If you're on your way, I'll stick around

Alison Stewart: Now if someone goes and listens to Raveena's music, it's a little bit alternative R&B when she's on her own. What made you want to work with her?

Prateek Kuhad: I just love her voice, honestly. I really like a lot of her songs as well. Even with like this record with The Way That Lovers Do, there's a couple of songs which are almost approaching R&B territory. Especially if you listen to Just A Word, for example. It's got very R&B vibes.

I love a lot of genres of music, R&B being one of them. I've liked her music for years. I discovered it I think five or six years ago, so I've just really always liked her and then we got connected a couple of years back, and I was like, "Man, do you want to work on something together because I've loved your music for so long." She's also just a wonderful human being to just be around, which is really good energy.

Alison Stewart: You look like you are ready to play another song.

Prateek Kuhad: [chuckles] Yes, sure.

Alison Stewart: Yes, let's do it. Why not. You had your guitar ready to go. What are we going to hear?

Prateek Kuhad: All right, so I'll do another one from the record called The Last Time. It's one of my favorites from the album.

[music: The Last Time by Prateek Kuhad]

The last time I had you

How did I find you?

Nosebleeds and sunscreen

Yeah, my heart screams "I want you"

The lines blur in your fake fur

Yeah, your shiny, fake skin purse

Hold me and I'll hold you

When you're with me, I'm with you

I don't wanna hide away

Baby, can you let me be someone again?

Don't wanna hang sideways

Baby, can you let me be someone again?

Did I even know you?

Did you even know me?

Let's rewind

Baby, you're a safe space sometimes

Or maybe we just need to some time

When you kiss mе, and my lips hurt

When you touch me, my skin burns

Hmm, baby, hold me through the night

I don't wanna hide away

Baby, can you let me be someone again?

Don't wanna hang sideways

Baby, can you let me be someone again?

Did I even know you?

Did you even know me?

Let's rewind

Our heartbeats lined, we're one design

Baby, you're a safe space sometimes

Or maybe we just needed some time

Alison Stewart: That's Prateek Kuhad. When did you first pick up a guitar?

Prateek Kuhad: I think I was 16, maybe 17, something like that.

Alison Stewart: Do you remember why?

Prateek Kuhad: The real story is I was taking guitar classes at school, and I was failing at them. I started to just work hard on it by working with this tutor outside of school who worked with me hard on getting me just so that I don't fail guitar class in high school. That's how it started. I just got obsessed myself with it after that. I was just playing by myself.

Alison: You told Condé Nast Traveller being a kid who can sing and play guitar is "a big deal in India." How so?

Prateek Kuhad: Yes. Especially, I think at that time, and I come from a relatively smaller city in India called Jaipur, which did not have a very large, almost non-existent actually, like music culture, other than the traditional music which was there, but there was no concert culture, there was no shows really that had happened. I was one of the few people who could play the guitar. Not in the whole city, but at least in my circle and in school. There was just one or two other people. It was not that common. Even if you could just play anything at all and sing a little bit, it was just like, "Whoa."

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Then you come to New York to go to college. What were your plans before the music thing took off?

Prateek Kuhad: I was studying math and economics at NYU. I did always like math actually even in school, in high school, so I was pretty happy with majoring in mathematics. I was just playing shows on the side. This was supposed to be the main thing, doing the math and economics thing, maybe getting into finance or something like that, but then music took off after college.

Alison Stewart: Do you see an intersection with math and music?

Prateek Kuhad: I don't. I hear a lot of people saying, I don't at all. I get it, because I feel like, the technical side of music, sure, there's a lot of logic to it in terms of just how harmonies work and stuff like that. I think from a songwriter's perspective, actually, it's a complete opposite of math because there is really no rationality or reasoning to it, it's more about emotions, what people like in music. Maybe you can make it a certain way. What really moves people are also the combination of the melody and the words, and that is a very intuitive, non-scientific thing.

I haven't figured out a process to it really. It's just more about just feeling it out. It's very different from math, which is the complete opposite.

Alison Stewart: Prateek, when did you find out that you had made former president Obama's annual playlist?

Prateek Kuhad: Pretty much as soon as the post from his account came out, yes.

Alison Stewart: What was noticeable? What happened? Did your Instagram account go up? Did your phone blow up? What happened?

Prateek Kuhad: Both of those things happened. A lot of press followed the next couple of weeks in India. I did tons of national TV interviews. It was a weird time. It just all happened all the way suddenly

Alison Stewart: How did it change things for you professionally?

Prateek Kuhad: I think it's just basically with all the press that followed and stuff, suddenly a lot of people knew about me.

Alison Stewart: What are your next plans, now that you've released this Deluxe album? You just played Brooklyn, still touring, new music, what's next?

Prateek: New music, mainly. Mainly just working on the next release, and I wrap my head around. I've been writing a bunch, but after writing it, it takes me a while to get perspective on what songs I want to put out and not. I feel like I keep listening to them periodically every couple of months. Then also continuing to write more, and hopefully, start putting out records again soon.

Alison Stewart: Anybody you want to collaborate with? You want to put it out into the universe?

Prateek Kuhad: I think I'll just let the universe decide for me.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] All right. You've gracely agreed to play one more song for us. What are we going to hear? Tell folks what you like to listen for in this song.

Prateek Kuhad: This is one of the songs that I was talking about earlier, which we did not put out last year. It's called Hopelessly. This is on the Deluxe. It's a pretty old song, actually, and I've been wanting to put it out for a while. Another one of my favorites from the record.

[music: Hopelessly by Prateek Kuhad]

Yeah nothing felt safer

So silently we fall

I wrote it on paper

Cause it’s all I’ve really got

You, you have me hopelessly in love

I wanna believe you

But the pain comes in the way

I don’t wanna leave you

But all the signs they point away

You, you have me hopelessly in love

Believe me, you complete me

Feel me, heal me

I need you close

I need to belong

I feel so confined

I won't carry on

We sleep under stars

We race on our knees

Look into my heart

I need you to see

I wanna believe you

But the pain comes in the way

I don’t wanna leave you

But darling I need to walk away

You, you have me hopelessly in love

Alison Stewart: That was Prateek Kuhad. Prateek, thank you so much for being with us.

Prateek Kuhad: Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun.

Alison Stewart: That is All Of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I will meet you back in the next time.

[music]

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