Lata Mangeshkar (Marathi-born September 28, 1929) is a singer from India. She is one of the best-known playback singers in the Hindi film industry. Mangeshkar's career started in 1942 and has spanned over six and a half decades. She sang in over a thousand Bollywood movies and has sung songs in over twenty regional Indian languages, but primarily in Hindi. She is the elder sister of the equally accomplished singer Asha Bhosle and lesser-known singers, brother Hridayanath Mangeshkar and sisters Usha Mangeshkar and Meena Mangeshkar. Lata is the second vocalist ever to have received the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour.

Mangeshkar was featured in the Guinness Book of World Records from 1974 to 1991 for having made the most recordings in the world. The claim was that she had recorded no less than 25,000 solo, duet, and chorus-backed songs in 20 Indian languages between 1948 to 1974 (30,000 songs between 1948 and 1987, according to the 1987 edition). Over the years, while several sources have supported this claim, others have raised concerns over its veracity, claiming that this number was highly exaggerated and that Mangeshkar's sister, Asha Bhosle, had more song recordings than she had.