Sistla Janaki (born 23 April 1938) is an Indian playback singer and occasional music composer from Andhra Pradesh.

She has recorded over 48000 songs in films, albums, TV and Radio which includes solos, duets, chorus and title tracks in 20 languages including Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi, Sanskrit, Odia, Tulu, Urdu, Punjabi, Badaga, Bengali, Konkani and also in foreign languages such as English, Japanese, German and Sinhala; the highest number of songs in her career were in Kannada followed by Malayalam.

[2].She began her singing career with the Tamil film Vidhiyin Vilayattu (1957) and recorded in six languages in the same year.

Janaki was born on 23 April in Pallapatla, Repalle Taluka, in Guntur, Madras Presidency, British India (now in Andhra Pradesh).

[7] Janaki's mother tongue is Telugu and she can fluently converse and write in Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi.

[8][9][10][11][12] While in her twenties, Janaki moved to Chennai on the advice of her uncle, to work with Music composer R. Sudarsanam in AVM Studios as a singer.

[13] She picked a Malayalam lullaby "Amma Poovinum"[14] from 10 Kalpanakal as her swansong of her 60-year singing career and retired on 28 October 2017 with a concert held at Mysuru.

She was the favorite of many popular music composers like V Dakshinamoorthi, MS Baburaj, Shyam, MB Sreenivasan, A.T.Ummer and Salil Choudhary.

Movies like Bava maradalu, Pooja Phalam and Bangaru Panjaram had songs by S Janaki which were immensely popular.

Two songs which need special mention from this combination are "nambide ninna naadhadevate" from Sandhya Raga and "Karedaru kelade" from Sanaadi Appanna: both became very popular.

Dr. Rajkumar, who had begun his acting career in the 1950s, got to sing his first duet with S. Janaki – "Tumbitu Manavaa" – for the film "Mahishasura Mardini" in which he played the villain.

Ranga Rao composed memorable duets sung by Dr. Rajkumar and S. Janaki for "Vasanta Geeta", "Hosabelaku" and "Samayada Gombe".

For Hosabelaku, Ranga Rao composed a melodious tune for a poem by Rashtrakavi Kuvempu "Teredide Mane O Baa Atithi" and S. Janaki sung this along with another legendary singer Vani Jayaram.

The earliest recognised collaboration of S Janaki's was with the Malayalam composer MS Baburaj, who specialised in Hindustani music.

Some of Janaki's best known solos come from this collaboration, including Vasantha Panchami Naalil (Bhargavi Nilayam), Anjana Kannezhuthi (Thacholi Othenan) and Thaane Thirinjum Marinjum (Ambalapravu).

When he got a chance to compose music for his debut film Annakkili (1976) he asked Janaki to sing 3 songs which became immensely popular, beginning an era in Tamil cinema.

After Ilaiyaraaja started giving more songs to S. Janaki, even other music composers followed by making her sing their top hits.

1980s saw the meteoric rise of Janaki with a strong back up from Illaiyaraja, as she sang his songs in all four South Indian languages.

Radios called the pair of SPB and S Janaki as "Love Birds" and are termed to be the "Best singing pair" in Kannada cinema, owing mainly to their romantic duets composed by Rajan–Nagendra in the 1970s and 80s[18] In terms of numbers, it was Rajan–Nagendra who gave maximum songs to Janaki after Ilaiyaraaja.

Some top hit songs came from movies such as Eradu Kanasu, Hombisilu, Gaali Maathu, Pavana Ganga, Avala Hejje, Chandana Gombe, Naa Ninna Bidalare and the list continues.

Kannada cinema offered SJ real gems of her singing career and Vijaya Bhaskar is no exception.

Though his main singers were P Susheela in 60s and Vani Jayaram and Chitra in 70s and 80s, he gave some of his best compositions to S Janaki in movies like Gejje Pooje, Bellimoda, Upasane, Seetha (1970 film); he chose her whenever the song needed some special singing.

During the '90s, Janaki sang many great Tamil and Telugu songs for A. R. Rahman at the early stage of his career.