His career started when Usha Khanna after listening to his voice in a cassette called him in April 1986, to sing a qawwali, "Mere Dil Main Hai Andhera, Koi Shamma To Jala De" in Do Yaar.

This song, "Parbat Se Kaali Ghata Takrai" with Asha Bhosle also proved a hit along with "Sheharon Mein Ek Shehar Suna" with Lata Mangeshkar.

Anu Malik swept aside Nadeem-Shravan by late 1993–94 and Vinod Rathod was very much there in hits like "Ae Mere Humsafar", "Kitabein Bahut Si", "Samajhkar Chand Jisko" and "Chupana Bhi Nahin Aata' – Baazigar.

Not only a huge list of production houses Vinod has sung more than 3500 songs in various languages such as Hindi, Nepali, English, Gujarati, Marathi, Sindhi, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Rajasthani, Bhojpuri and Persian.

[citation needed] He entered the big films league in 1988 and he had received two times nomination for Filmfare Award for Best Male Playback Singer for his best performance in "Aisi Deewangi" from Deewana and "Nayak Nahin Kahlnayak Hoon Main" from Khalnayak.

He has sung for all the leading composers and his most popular co-singers were Sadhana Sargam, Anuradha Paudwal, Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar, Alka Yagnik, Poornima and Kavita Krishnamurthy.

While he was known for his chartbuster songs, he also provided his voice to South Indian actors in a total of nine films including Akkineni Nagarjuna Rao, Ghattamaneni Mahesh Babu, U. V. S. Prabhas Raju, Jr.