“Can I pretend to be me?” is the question that AKoustic Soul's latest release 'Pretend' will answer

“Can I pretend to be me?” was a thought that came to Amit Khadikar (a.k.a. AKoustic Soul) 7 years ago. Today he is puzzled by the contrasting question “Can I pretend to be you?". Amit who has studied MBA in Finance and has worked in the IT industry for a few years has always tried to be true to his music while working hard in his field. He has won many accolades at work as well as in music, which culminated in the big win at the Global VIMA Music Awards 2018 for AKoustic Soul.

Pretend is the 8th single from his AKoustic Soul project and it was released on 10th of June in 2021. The song is an introspective track that he has poured his 'soul' into. The two verses of the song were written 7 years apart, where he has had two different vantage points in his life, each asking and seeking the answer to the two questions “Can I pretend to be me?” and “Can I pretend to be you?". The first verse questions is a quest of him learning to be himself in a world where we make decisions and end up doing things that we never planned in our lives, but end up doing them and live happily with the way things turned out. On the other hand, he wonders if we regret things we may not have done and probably disapprove of our decisions. These 2 sides to the same coin gave fuel to the notion “Can I pretend to be me?”

The second verse came to him as a calling, the many years later when the thought 'Can I pretend to be you?' struck his mind and he realized that this is the second part of the story he began. "Over the years with my interactions growing stronger while meeting so many different people, I realized that many are molded into being a certain way either in a forced manner or willingly, which means that they gel in the crowd and others end up seeing that as the real them. Hence, as you can see, this goes to the very essence of our being and is one of the most intense tracks I have written till date" he tells us. The song is an adept translation of his thoughts and feelings into music and he hopes that it resonates with everyone that listens to it.