Veteran singer S P Balasubrahmanyam died in a Chennai hospital today (Friday) after battling Covid-19 for a month. He was 74.

Balasubrahmanyam was admitted to MGM Healthcare for Covid-19 symptoms on 5^th August and was unwell ever since. His condition deteriorated eight days later and was moved to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and he was on life support and his condition remained critical.

SPB, as his fans called him, was born into an orthodox Telugu Brahmin family in Andhra Pradesh. He was the second son in a family of three sons and five daughters. His father, S. P. Sambamurthy, was a well-known exponent of traditional art Harikatha and his sister S.P. Sailaja is a former actress-singer in Tollywood. He is survived by daughter Pallavi and son S P B. Charan.

He has sung more than 40,000 songs in more than 5 different Indian languages, including Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Hindi and Malayalam. He holds the world record in the Guinness Book of World Records for having sung the most number of song recordings by any singer. SPB has sung several private albumsr also.

The singer won six National Awards and practically monopolised playback singing for more than 30 years in South India.