Being a female artist has always come with its baggage, the ifs, the buts, the quiet conditions attached to ambition, especially when you start out young. Navigating a system not built with you in mind can be disorienting.
Take Alysa Liu. She began skating at five, rose quickly through the ranks, and won bronze at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, along with several other titles. And then she retired, feeling she had given the sport everything she wanted to.
When she returned in March 2024, it was on her own terms. She chose her costumes, her choreography, her music. She was in charge.
Liu came out of retirement with her halo hairstyle and frenulum piercing, subverting every expectation of what a figure skater is supposed to look like or how she is supposed to behave. At the 2026 Milan Winter Olympics, she went on to win two gold medals for Team USA, and this time, she looked like she was having the time of her life on the ice.
What Liu’s return revealed, the moment a woman stops negotiating with expectation and starts defining it.
In India’s pop landscape, female artists have long navigated a similarly prescriptive industry, one that often celebrates their voices but polices their image and ambition. The shift happens when the artist stops negotiating with expectation and starts defining it, like Priyanka Chopra did with Exotic in 2013 and like what Sunidhi Chauhan has been doing with her country wide tour.
And that energy is something we’re seeing echo and resurface across a new wave of South Asian pop artists. From Shevya’s unapologetic and bold lyrics to Janani Jha’s firm and impassioned response to the West’s cultural appropriation of the East, here are three South Asian female pop artists that are, in their own way, reshaping what pop stardom can look and sound like, refusing to be curated into any form of palatability.
Janani K. Jha is an Indian-American singer-songwriter and storyteller who brings together pop sensibilities with literary and mythological depth. Her debut album, The Rest of the Laurels, was a concept project inspired by Greco-Roman mythology, with each song drawing from and responding to a specific myth. Her upcoming music shifts focus toward a pointed response to the West’s cultural appropriation of the East, particularly South Asian culture, and the tendency to repackage it as its own. As a member of the diaspora, Jha’s voice is especially distinct in articulating how Eastern aesthetics are often used for palatable convenience rather than being genuinely seen and acknowledged.
Shevya Awasthi is a South Asian artist reshaping the pop landscape by fusing Indian influences with contemporary R&B and pop sensibilities. Her music foregrounds a distinctly modern voice without diluting the cultural foundations it emerges from. Instead of translating herself for a global audience, she positions Hindi at the centre of her sound — because if K-pop and Bad Bunny can do it why can’t a desi girl? Her work treats “global” and “Indian”as collaborators, not as opposing forces. By positioning Hindi lyricism within contemporary pop frameworks, she challenges the assumption that crossover success requires any sort of erasure to fit into the pop-star mould that has been crafted.
Ira Sharma is a rising pop singer-songwriter based out of Los Angeles. Her songs speak about everything from vulnerable heartbreaks to party starters that make you want to reclaim your heart and space. Her visuals are reminiscent of old-school South Asian divas like her latest music video ‘Teri’ seems like a direct nod to Aishwarya Rai from Dhoom 2. The attitude, the confidence and the striking ambition to prove yourself. Sharma’s artistic vision speaks to both her South Asian heritage and global pop culture refusing to be boxed in by geography or genre.
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