An Albanian pop star who topped a Billboard dance chart after moving to California
At 15, Bleona Qereti became a household name in Albania after one festival performance. Two decades, eight Albanian albums and a move to Los Angeles later, she reached the top spot on Billboard's Dance Club Songs chart in February 2019 with I Don't Need Your Love.
Born in Korçë on May 14, 1979, to Oli and Nazmi Qereti, she started singing at 5 with the House of Pionieri. Her parents urged her at 13 to drop music for schoolwork; she ignored them, and at 14 won the lead singer role at the Skampa Theater in Elbasan. After her breakthrough at the Albanian National Music Festival she released the single Lermëni in 1996 and a debut album the following year, touring 25 summer venues in Switzerland and Germany. She also earned an acting degree trained in the Stanislavski System from the Academy of Performing Arts in Tirana, plays violin, and sings in Albanian, English and Italian, a language she picked up through songs.
Between 1998 and 2002 four more albums charted across south-eastern Europe. In 1999 she headlined a humanitarian tour for the people of Kosovo, and in 2000 and 2001 she played more than 80 European concerts. By her own account, a 2003 album sold 400,000 copies, and her official biography says her eighth album, Mandarin, meaning tangerine, passed 800,000 in 2007; she dyed her hair red to match. She won prizes at the Kënga Magjike festival in Tirana in 2005 and 2008.
She relocated to the United States in September 2010, became a citizen in February 2011, and began working with Timbaland after meeting him at the Grammy Awards. Her first English single, Show Off with Petey Pablo, came out in September 2010, followed by Pass Out, whose 2012 promotional tour reportedly drew over 70,000 fans across Albania, Kosovo, North Macedonia and Germany. Take It Like a Man reached number 7 on the UK club chart in 2013, and in 2015 Take You Over climbed as high as third place on Billboard's club play ranking.
Screen work followed: a 2012 appearance on Steven Seagal's True Justice, roles alongside Dolph Lundgren in Dead Trigger and Nicolas Cage in 211, and the part of Nova in the 2019 series Paper Empire. She was a judge on Albania's X Factor and stood out on Bravo's Euros of Hollywood in 2014.
Source: Bleona
