Bhosle faced constant comparisons with her sister, fuelling rumours of rivalry.
Despite the sisters living in the same building and sharing a cordial relationship, some claim Mangeshkar hindered Bhosle’s career, with Bhosle herself once suggesting she could have risen “earlier than I did”, external with her sister’s help.
Mangeshkar attributed their silence to Bhosle’s husband’s influence. While the rivalry persists in public perception, many believe it has been exaggerated.
In 1971, Bhosle told film writer Raju Bharatan: “After all we’d both inherited… the bounty of music. No doubt didi [older sister in Hindi] had a headstart, but that only made me more determined to catch up with her.”
Bhosle was celebrated for her remarkable ability to adapt her voice to evolving musical styles.
Over the years, she collaborated with a range of international pop artists – in the early 1990s, she teamed up with Boy George and recorded a track with R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe.
Meanwhile, Cornershop’s tribute to her singing gained even greater popularity after a remix by Fatboy Slim.
Bhosle’s love for cricket was well known, with the sport being one of her favorite pastimes.
Her collaboration with Australian cricketer Brett Lee in 2007 was a fun moment, as they teamed up for the song You’re the One for Me, which featured during the inaugural Indian Premier League (IPL) season.
“Any meeting with Asha has to be a talk show. She will do all the talking, of course, interrupting the flow of words only to sing,” Bharatan, her biographer, wrote.
“You could make all the fun that you wanted of her – she would take it on the chin like the good sport that she is.”
Bhosle celebrated her 90th birthday in 2023 with a live concert in Dubai. “At 90, standing for three hours on stage and singing is a blessing,” she said in an interview ahead of the show.
Bhosle never stopped working. In 2020, she launched the online talent show Asha Ki Asha. She also started a YouTube channel, encouraged by her granddaughter Zanai, sharing stories from her career and gaining over 160,000 subscribers.
“For me, music is my breath, external. I have spent my life with this thought. I have given a lot to music. I feel good I’ve come out of difficult times. Many times I felt I would not be able to survive, but I did,” Bhosle said in 2023.
In one of her final recordings, she collaborated with the British virtual band Gorillaz on their 2026 album The Mountain, shaped by themes of grief, mortality and spiritual transition.
The track, The Shadowy Light, paired her unmistakable voice with a cross-cultural ensemble, its imagery of a boatman guiding a soul across unknown waters reflecting on death and the afterlife.
The collaboration stood as a powerful closing note to her career, affirming her enduring ability to transcend boundaries of genre, geography and time.
