For years, BLEONA was one of Albania’s biggest pop stars, releasing eight albums, selling millions of records and performing for massive crowds across Europe. But when she moved to Los Angeles to reinvent herself for an English-language career, she made a radical decision: she removed much of the Albanian catalog that had made her famous from digital platforms, including videos that had amassed tens of millions of views. In trying to start over, she effectively erased the online history of the career she had already built. Now, she wants it back, and is ready to tell her story.
BLEONA is re-recording and reimagining 20 of those songs across two new visual albums, beginning with “ERA,” a newly reworked version of one of her original Albanian songs. At the same time, she is releasing new English-language music, including “RIDE IT” and “BOY GONE BAD,” with an upcoming EP produced by Timbaland.
The story is especially timely as artists increasingly revisit masters, catalogs, ownership and the value of controlling their creative legacy. Except BLEONA’s story has a twist: she wasn’t fighting a label to get her history back. She was undoing a decision she made herself.
Her career since then has included a No. 1 on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart, judge on X Factor Albania, Bravo’s Euros of Hollywood, film roles opposite Nicolas Cage and Aaron Eckhart, a 30-year career tribute at Festivali i Këngës landed the 2026 cover of Vogue México’s Vogue Belleza, and this fall will become the face of a global Balmain Beauty campaign, followed by another Vogue cover for its September fashion issue in Czechoslovakia.
But this next chapter is less about nostalgia than reconciliation: reclaiming the music that made her famous while deciding what parts of her past belong in the artist she is becoming now.
At a moment when Albanian women are an undeniable force in global pop, BLEONA is bringing every chapter of her career together with a new mission: to globalize Albanian music.
I would seriously and sincerely love to know your opinion.