It starts with the memory of my mother in a dark brown mink coat, the story of how I grew to like dressing up. Some details in this memory are fuzzy, but what I recall with certainty is that it was a winter weekend night, that the bora wind whooshed across the city, and that a frenetic energy electrified the apartment, lighting up every room with a sense of urgency that meant only one thing in our household—my parents were getting ready to go out with their friends.
The bora terrified my mom. It somehow was the cause of the common cold and the flu and pneumonia and meningitis and many facial droops to which, allegedly, we from the Adriatic coast were particularly susceptible to, which is why, on the night I remember, she pulled out a long fur coat from the depths of the armoire and zoomed across the hallway in search of the right accessories.
I watched her from the living room in reverie. She opened boxes of jewelry and tried on necklaces and earrings and then abandoned them. She excavated purses and gloves and scarves I had never seen before and then abandoned them. The apartment metamorphosed into a sartorial entropy as she curated her outfit, a process that by then had already become a routine and that seemed amusingly unnecessary to me, because I knew—even as a kid—that nothing exciting ever happened when they went out. They saw the same friends at the same restaurants where they ate the same food and laughed at the same jokes, again and again, and they always came back home before midnight and nice was always the word they used when I asked them how the night was.
But for some reason she deemed this routine necessary and, however inefficient it seemed to me, it always worked and so it worked that night as well. From the chaos she created at last emerged a complete outfit: the fur coat layered over a taupe knit sweater and black dress pants, punctuated with black leather gloves, brown leather boots, maroon scarf, and burgundy lipstick. The final touch then ensued: Lancôme’s Magie Noire, the perfume she kept tucked away in the fridge and that she wore only on winter nights, when the scent’s dark notes of bitter greens and oakmoss and civet could reign freely in the cold dry air.
She was suddenly no longer the mom who wore a drab apron and baked potatoes but a mystifying and magnetic character from some other life she led, one more glamorous and more elusive than the one she led with us. And though I knew that night would be like every other and that she would simply say nice when I asked her how the night was, the moment she completed her look and told dad she was ready, I believed with conviction that it would be the best night she ever had.
The thing is, despite my nearly perfect recall of that night, I had shelved the memory of it deep in my mental file cabinet and lived unaware of its existence for almost twenty years, until the night of my friend’s thirty-second birthday, a time by which I had been living in San Francisco for many years, separated by continents and oceans from my mom. The night I am talking about was yet another winter night in the city on which nothing new happened. I saw the same friends, we hung out at the same bar, we drank the same drinks, we talked about the same shows, I heard the same gasps when I said I had not yet seen The White Lotus, and I went home before midnight on the same bus.
Yet I still felt pleased with my life. My cropped navy leather jacket with red accent stripes and pull-straps, my print baggy jeans, and my square-toe platform military boots were all a hit. Heads were turned that night and I had learned to see that as a small victory worth living for. And when I came back home that Saturday night, for the first time I thought there was perhaps a familiarity in those late hours to the image of my apartment, where many pairs of jeans lay abandoned on the floor and many folded jackets hung from the chairs and the citrusy benzene notes of Dior’s Fahrenheit lingered in the air.
Should you ever find yourself in Croatia over the summer, and should the summer find you in popular cities like Split or Dubrovnik, and should the cities find you exhausted from the clamor of globe-trotting vacationers, you might like to know that two regions, dotted by picturesque coastal towns of unwieldy names, stretch between these cities and are known to locals as the Omiš Riviera and the Makarska Riviera.
The beaches in the Rivieras are narrow, sometimes rocky and sometimes pebbly but almost never sandy, and this particular geological composition is of great importance, the locals will say, because the rocks and the pebbles are good for the soles of the feet. Shade is abundant on these beaches thanks to the fragrant pines that form natural canopies, and you will notice that locals tend to retreat their beach towels in the pine shade when the sun is at its strongest, which, according to collective wisdom of the locals, is approximately between noon and 4 p.m.
Maybe you will also notice that everyone shows up at the beach. Babies. Kids. Teens. Couples, singles, parents, grandparents. And, should you spend an entire day on the beach, which you might notice is what all the locals do, maybe you will also observe that, in between the children’s laughter and the adult beach chatter, there is a moment when each beachgoer stops talking and detaches from the social fabric of these coastal towns. Some find a place of solitude to sunbathe, where the sea breeze brushes against the skin and brings a faint scent of distant lavender fields. Some curl up, rest their heads on the knees, and play with pebbles. Others watch the buoys rise and fall in the distance as waves come and go, lumbering in a procession: first they climb in deep navy, then peak in cobalt blue, then they roll over to the shore in teal, and then fizzle out in turquoise.
A little over 6,000 miles away from the Rivieras, in the state of California, in the city of Newport Beach, just off the Pacific Coast Highway, if you go down the stairs from the Reef Point parking lot, you will find yourself at a sandy beach in the Crystal Cove State Park, at a particular section of the beach that is between the Scotchman’s Cove and the 3.5 Cove, to be precise. The wide beach stretches into the distance on both sides, the distance gets outlined by rugged tall cliffs that grow flowers and weeds, and the flowers and weeds retreat their scents in the presence of oceanic accords of saltwater, kelp, dirt, and seagulls.
At Crystal Cove, the waves of the Pacific Ocean do not lumber. They surge in the distance. They crash against the rocky concretions in the Monterey formation. They hug the shore, pull the washed up shells and weeds into their embrace, and then retire, slowly, back into the distance. Here, at any time of the year, you will see the locals walk barefoot along the shoreline, leaving footprints in the elastic wet sand that disappear as soon as they are formed. Most of the time, people walk alone, sometimes in couples but rarely in groups. Some say hi when you cross paths, others nod and smile. Some do neither because they are looking at the ocean, others because they are looking down. Almost everybody laughs at the sanderlings who first chase the traces of waves and then run away from them, and then chase again, and then run away again.
About 430 miles north of the Crystal Cove State Park, should you find yourself in the city of San Francisco, you can take the N Judah light rail train, one of the city’s public transport options, to get to Ocean Beach. You can board the train in the financial district area, say at the Montgomery Station, where corporate offices reign and construction machinery clatters and police sirens wail, and fifty minutes later, disembark the train at Judah St and La Playa Station, where the Golden Gate Park’s Murphy Windmill and Monterey cypresses proudly face the Pacific Ocean and where the lilac, livid, pale ocher and pale peach houses of the Sunset neighborhood lie low and listen to the ocean waves murmur across the street.
It’s almost always cold at Ocean Beach, even when the sun blazes and the sand burns, but people of San Francisco still show up and walk barefoot along the shoreline. If you do the same, which you should, you might see resigned bull kelps and cracked shells and bleached sand dollar tests and desaturated crab carapaces, and you might wonder what all goes on in those deep waters. Cargo ships, at first, loom on the horizon like ghosts and, before you know it, become real and look bigger than the ocean itself. The sights at Ocean Beach are striking—they command and impress, which is maybe why people of San Francisco come prepared, with beach tents and jackets and wet suits and snacks, and maybe why everyone in San Francisco has an opinion on the right month and the right day and the right hour to go to Ocean Beach.
It’s on N Judah that I found myself this summer, in the week I was off from work, going to Ocean Beach in the late morning and coming back to my apartment in the late afternoon. That I found myself on the train, on my way to the beach, is the right way to frame this experience because the first time I went, I didn’t know why I was going but I knew I simply had to go. One day, I went into the icy, salty ocean water multiple times. Another day, I watched and listened to the ocean waves. And another day, I walked barefoot along the shoreline and counted cracked shells. And then another day, I saw the ocean glisten below the majestic Western sun and I felt a weight dissolve off my chest.
Perhaps I should have known why I was at Ocean Beach, because three years ago, when I was at a crossroads and when I spent a lot of time with my extended family in Newport Beach, it was the Crystal Cove State Park and the Reef Point beach where I found myself every day, and because, for the first twenty years of my life, it was the beaches of the Croatian Rivieras where I found myself befriending the sea and learning that the sea never asked, never judged, never distrusted. Perhaps I should have known that I was at Ocean Beach because the colossal indigo blue depths are what I turn to when I have questions, when I have to relearn that not all of my questions have answers, that not all of my worries need to be worries at all.
I have been thinking, ever since that week, that I never noticed how I had structured my life to always have the seas and the oceans near me, even when I am far away from them. Like how my furniture is all deep blue, orange, and yellow: the colors of the ocean in the last seconds of the sunset. Or how my pillows and sheets and bedroom walls are all in shades of beige: the colors of sand. Or how so many of my shirts and sweaters and jackets and shoes are in shades of blue, and how I never name blue as my favorite outfit color when it inarguably is.
Why not lakes, why not rivers, I have also been thinking. Why did they never feel the same way? Maybe because they were always too still or always too rushed. And what about mountains and the crisp mountain air and the scenic mountain sights people talk about? They never did anything for me either, maybe because the mountains demand to be fought for, because they offer gifts to only those who conquer their heights.
What I have been really thinking about the most, ever since that week, is how I had always felt an immediate connection with people whose childhoods orbited around the seas and the oceans. It’s a bond that is implicit and unspoken, a bond that exists through a shared need to sit by the water, to watch the waves that demand to be seen, and to speak only when necessary. In the presence of something that’s always there with a power so grand to swallow us completely, to do nothing but exist. In the presence of those colossal indigo blue depths, to surrender.
I turned thirty last September. I spent that entire day on a long flight on my way back to the States, secretly hoping one of the flight attendants would come by and leave a small note on my tray table, thanking me for choosing to fly with United on the day of my birth. That, of course, did not happen, so I think it’s safe to say it was the least glamorous birthday I ever had. And yet, I was at peace. I felt genuinely excited that day to bid adieu to my twenties and to start the fourth decade of my life. I felt content.
There were many, many great experiences in the last ten years. I made incredible friends, I finished school, I got a job doing what I like, I lived in incredible cities, I learned how to take more risks, I learned how to conquer some of my biggest fears, and I learned how to courageously face some of my deepest wounds. I was privileged to have these experiences.
But, there were some dark moments in there as well, filled with sadness, loneliness, confusion, and anxiety. I certainly knew those feelings were a rite of passage. Twenties, despite their glamorized portrayal in pop culture, are supposed to be full of ups and downs. Those ups and downs are allegedly what turns us into stronger and wiser adults.
At the same time, while I knew everyone else was experiencing similar feelings, I still felt that I wasn’t doing life correctly. There were so many changes happening each year, and I felt that I lacked the ability to control them and to preserve stability. Just as I would figure out one aspect of my existence, it felt as if the universe then did a full factory reset, throwing me into an entirely new configuration.
And so, I kept waiting for that “wisdom” to come. You know, the wisdom that everyone keeps telling you about. The one that suddenly hits you in the last few months of your twenties after you have overcome all these annoying hurdles. The one that suddenly bestows upon you this incredible talent to handle life and all the curve balls that it throws. The one that teaches you how to do life correctly.
The funny thing is that the “wisdom” did actually come. It just wasn’t what others told me it would be. In early 2020, my parents came to San Francisco for a visit. I distinctly remember telling my dad that I felt I was in the right place at the right time. I was feeling more comfortable at my job, I felt that I have grown into myself more, and that I was happy with who I have become. I was a little sad that I wasn’t able to leave the country because of my green card application, but I figured it was going to be a fun year nonetheless and that I would spend it with my close friends in the city.
Life had other plans though. The pandemic hit and everything changed. All of a sudden, I was in my cramped apartment all the time, day after day. My laptop and Google Hangouts became my life. Many friends moved away and disappeared, some of them very suddenly without having said goodbye. When I did see people, every conversation centered around the virus. I couldn’t see my family even if I wanted to because my immigration process would come to a full stop. I felt like I was in double quarantine. I felt I was no longer in the right place at the right time. It was all so surreal and so unbelievable.
I was fortunate enough that I didn’t lose anyone in my life to Covid and that all the people I loved could, for the most part, stay at home if they wanted. Which is why I didn’t understand why I felt so sad and frustrated. Everyone else was going through the same thing—some through far worse experiences and in far worse circumstances—and yet it felt as if everyone else had accepted this new normal and effortlessly adapted to its harsh conditions.
That obviously wasn’t true. Everyone struggled. One thing was certain though; I was refusing to accept that the world had changed. It took me a while to understand this, but I—like everyone else that year—was grieving. I was grieving the loss of my pre-pandemic life, I was grieving the loss of all the pre-pandemic rituals that I took for granted, and I was grieving the loss of the pre-pandemic time freely spent with the people I loved. And I was refusing to move on. I got stuck.
I am not mentioning this to complain about my objectively frivolous pandemic woes but to point out that the “wisdom” came with this experience. What I learned was that stability cannot ever be permanent. Change is inevitable, wherever you are in life, and no matter how many times you successfully handle the inherent volatility of our existence, you are not spared from one of the toughest weapons in life’s arsenal: unexpected loss.
That can be an unexpected loss of a loved one. It could also be losing your job. Or losing your apartment. Or moving away from your family. Or ending a longterm relationship. Cutting out a friend from your life, getting cut out from a friend’s life, losing your pre-pandemic routine, and so on. The list is endless.
While they differ in magnitude, all these experiences have one thing in common: loss that comes unexpectedly and brings on an intense—though not always acknowledged—grieving process. Where they start to diverge is the path that you choose after that unexpected change and after that unexpected loss.
If there is wisdom to be acquired in our twenties, it’s exactly this one and it’s one that I don’t think people ever talk about. We don’t enter our thirties suddenly equipped with wisdom to do life correctly and to handle all life’s challenges. What does happen, at least what I have come to realize, is that all of us go through unexpected changes and unexpected loss in our twenties. Some of us learn how to reweave our life stories during that loss, victoriously emerging wiser on the other side, while some of us get stuck.
My mom always tells me she didn’t believe the rumors of a potential war in Bosnia and Herzegovina back in 1992. She was 25 at the time, pregnant with me, spending time with her friends, and hearing through the grapevine what she thought were grossly exaggerated stories of an impending disaster coming. And, then—it actually happened.
I never understood what she meant when she said that the world she knew ceased to exist that day and that her perception of people permanently changed, even when the war eventually ended. But I get it now. My family was fortunate to have not lost any loved ones in the war, but they still experienced massive loss. They lost their identities. They lost their sense of safety. They lost their sense of trust. They lost their sense of optimism. And, most horrifyingly, they lost the future they envisioned for themselves.
I can only see now from this vantage point that collectively they went through an agonizing grieving process. My parents and many of their friends, probably due to the fact that they had young children, accepted the loss and eventually rewove their life stories. Many others got stuck, yearning for the pre-war times and endlessly trying to recreate the social fabric of Yugoslavia. But those days were gone.
Over the last ten years, people who I have witnessed do life the right way were those who, with each chapter of unexpected change and unexpected loss, fell apart and relatively quickly realized they had to reweave their life story. It’s an uncontrollable process, of course, because simply getting up one day and saying that you have decided to rewrite your life story is not going to do it. But their awareness of the loss they suffered, even when that loss is not a loved one or even a person, provided the light they needed to eventually pick up the pieces and move on.
Pop culture calls this skill resilience. Personally, I never liked that term and I rarely use it. Resilience, for me, conjures an image of an elastic object, of something that can be bent and deformed but ultimately returned to its initial shape. From what I have experienced and what I have seen in these last ten years, that is not the solution to processing loss and moving on. It’s quite the opposite. It’s falling apart, losing your initial shape, and then having the hope and the courage to rebuild yourself into a new shape. One with a new, rewoven story.
That, of course, does not sound nearly as sexy and empowering as resilience. It might even seem hopeless because it takes away the sense of agency our Western culture likes to glamorize. I personally find it very humbling. There is something almost freeing about this piece of wisdom, knowing that in the lack of predictability, there is absolutely nothing that I can do to prevent change.
I remember reading an interview with Robyn for Time Magazine, just after she had released Honey, describing her tumultuous few years of depression that inspired this incredible album. And she mentioned that after she lost her collaborator, her view of the world changed. It became far less stable for her. Though she doesn’t say it explicitly, I could tell that the word she was going for was softer. That softness comes through the imagery of honey and can be felt, almost tactually, in the album’s eponymous song.
I really loved that symbolism. Life is far softer, far more amorphous than we think. It can give and gift but it can take and steal as it pleases. At the same time, that’s what makes the periods of stability withoutthese unexpected changes so precious and so special. I think that’s why I felt content the day I turned thirty. It wasn’t because life was objectively incredible. It also wasn’t because I had it all together. I was content because I realized there is no such thing as doing life correctly. With its honeylike softness, life will undoubtedly adopt many unexpected shapes, and the only correct thing I can do is to go with it. And appreciate every moment along the way.
Now that we have entered a new decade, I wanted to reconstruct my last ten years using the music I discovered in this period. What I really wanted to do with this is understand how my taste in music evolved.
I heard a lot of music over the last decade, but only some of it shaped my world and followed me as I (apparently) became an adult in different corners of the world: Mostar, Boston, Berlin, and San Francisco.
So, here’s what my life—and evolution of taste in music—looked like over the last ten years, told through the albums, extended plays, and singles that I will cherish forever.
Early 2010s
Starting with the year 2010, my first discovery of the decade was Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid (2010) album. I was a high school junior at the time and, naturally, had nothing to do but to listen to this record. It was a piece of work that was unquestionably a fantastic prelude to the year. Not only was it the first time that I was hearing a concept album, but it was also the first time I was listening to so many genres at once, from hip-hop and R&B to rock and classical. Through just those 18 tracks, the album expanded my music taste faster than years of listening to other records ever did. “Suite II Overture”, “Dance or Die”, “Faster”, “Suite III Overture”, and “BaBopByeYa” to this day remain some of my favorite pieces of contemporary music.
Then came the season of taking SATs and applying to colleges, which meant I spent very little time paying attention to music. When that unnerving period was finally over, I found out that Adele re-emerged with a new single “Rolling in the Deep” (2010) and that Hercules & Love Affair came out with a new album, which had a fantastic track called “My House” (2011). I listened to both tracks incessantly. Although the songs now remind me of anxiously waiting for college decisions, they hold a special place in my heart. Adele’s song was reminiscent of Amy Winehouse’s writing, and Hercules & Love Affair’s track was, looking back, probably my first independent discovery of house music. I would only learn later — after moving to the US and watching Paris is Burning — what “My House” was about, so I like to see this discovery as my prescient cultural enlightenment.
Then, in the spring of 2011, my life turned upside down when I found that I was actually moving to United States to attend MIT. Overwhelmed with both excitement and utter fear, I buried myself in music to cope with these conflicting feelings. Thankfully, many artists that year timed their album releases to be on schedule with my emotional turmoil, so I had plenty of material.
Planningtorock’s W (2011) album was the first on the list. I discovered the predecessor Have It All (2007) in 2009 and thought it was one of the most ridiculous and spectacular records I’ve ever heard. I expected the same type of loony production on the new album, but W subverted all my expectations. It took me a few weeks to get used to it, and once I did, I fell in love with the haunting yet funky musical arrangements of songs like “The One”, “The Breaks”, “Jam”, and “9”. The lyrics in the last one, “9”, for some reason left a strong impression on me and became an emblem of this period in my life.
On the same day of W’s release in May, GusGus came out with their album Arabian Horse (2011). The eponymous song from this record amazed me. It was a hypnotic dance track that immediately sent me to a place of deep introspection upon first hearing it. The chorus line “too bright to even the sun, more and more sand in my eyes” felt like the perfect description of my afternoons that summer: spent daydreaming and in thoughts of what my life would look like from now on.
In June, I discovered PJ Harvey’s songs “The Glorious Land” (2011) and “The Words That Maketh Murder” (2011). M.I.A. was the only artist in my arsenal at that point whose lyrics I could label as political, so hearing PJ Harvey tackle topics of militarism through folk music felt like an enhancement of my taste. Her songwriting was particularly impressive; I admired how vividly she portrayed the futility and malevolence of war through piercingly detached lyrics. Listening to her interviews about the parent album Let England Shake also helped me realize that writing music with political connotations required maturity and tact.
At the end of August, I left Europe and moved to Boston. The following year was a time of emotional growth, rapid cultural assimilation, and new friendships, all of which were accompanied by changes in my music taste as well. It was hard to discern this at the time, but it’s a causality that I can clearly see only a decade later, which is that the new environment and people had a profound impact on what type of music I was drawn to.
I was listening to a lot of Florence and the Machine’s Ceremonials (2011), Grimes’ Visions (2012), and Yelle’s Safari Disco Club (2011), which all differed in genre, but had one common denominator: nostalgic undertones, either through plaintive lyrics or downtempo production. My guess is that I was drawn to these as a result of my own bewilderment while I was trying to wrangle who I was in a new culture, far away from everything I used to know.
The one album that I distinctly associate with this period is Kelis’ Flesh Tone (2010). I remember first hearing “Intro”, “Home”, and “Emancipate” during a cold January afternoon and thinking how unusual it was to hear dance music that sounded so wintry and futuristic. Kelis did a great job of creating a cohesive concept album — the record was largely about motherhood — that reaffirmed how important it was for me to see a personalized and crystallized narrative in the music.
As I settled into my new life in Boston, there was an extended period of time in 2012 during which I drifted away from music. Like every college student, I learned that I didn’t know how to study and that I had to unlearn all my fruitless high-school habits. That process took almost a year. During this arduous time, the only two new songs that got on my radar were Jessie Ware’s “Running” (2012) and Róisín Murphy & David Morales’ “Golden Era” (2012). Together with Kelis’ and Grimes’ albums, these songs were starting to push my taste toward electronic music. And, although they now evoke memories of exam-driven anguish, they were all instrumental in preparing me for more energetic music that would come my way in the following years.
It was really 2013 when I started to feel truly settled in Boston. I was a college junior at that point and had started writing for the campus newspaper, which meant I was going to concerts with friends, interviewing artists, and listening to music on a more regular basis. I loved all of it. This exhilarating period was marked by Julia Holter’s “Horns Surrounding Me” (2013), Nils Frahm’s “Went Missing” (2013), Janelle Monáe’s The Electric Lady (2013) album, and MØ’s Bikini Daze EP. At the time, I thought these choices were undeniably sporadic and disconnected; Holter’s highly-experimental “Horns Surrounding Me” and Frahm’s classical “Went Missing” had no similarity to Monáe’s and Ørsted’s upbeat R&B and pop albums. In what seemed to be a typical pattern in my life, I would only learn later how a Berlin-based artist, affinity toward experimental production, and uptempo music would come together in a very formative period ahead of me.
Mid 2010s
2014 was probably the most important year in shaping my music taste after 2009. In the spring, I saw St. Vincent perform at The House of Blues in Boston, and fell in love with her eponymous St. Vincent (2014)album. Rock music was never really my go-to choice, but this record had enough eccentric crossover into other genres, making it easy for me to rediscover my appreciation for more vigorous music after living in mellower genres for much of the early 2010s.
Right around that time, tUnE yArDs’ Nikki Nack (2014) album came out as well, and it was the perfect complement to the euphoric St. Vincent’s album. I felt experimental overtones in each track, and the more I listened to the record, the more fascinated I became with songs that eschewed typical pop structures, such as “Left Behind” and “Real Thing”. To this day, listening to these two tracks along with St. Vincent’s “Huey Newton” and “Psychopath” remains my remedy for any sluggishness.
Looking back, discovering these two albums that year was paramount because they pushed me to embrace more energetic music. Over the summer, while doing an internship in Berlin and naturally discovering the city’s incredible nightlife, I got completely captivated by such genre: techno. It was, ironically, during one afternoon in July that I remembered seeing Holly Herndon perform as opener for St. Vincent earlier that year in Boston and then thinking “Maybe I’d actually enjoy listening to her music now that I am in Berlin?”
Her track “Chorus” (2014) suddenly became so magical and led me to discover her track “Fade” (2013), which then led me to discover Paula Temple’s track “Colonized” (2013), which then somehow led to enjoying Hercules and Love Affair’s The Feast of the Broken Heart (2014) album, which led to discovering John Grant’s “Pale Green Ghosts” (2013) track, eventually leading to Röyksopp and Robyn’s Do It Again (2014) EP. These releases marked my summer and were pivotal in expanding my taste.
I spent the rest of my time in Berlin riding the U-Bahn for three to four hours each weekend, listening to nothing but electronic music, particularly to techno and house. I knew I always enjoyed some flavors of electronic music, especially by being a fan of artists and bands like M.I.A. and Moloko, but that was the first time I was loving club-oriented electronic music: instrumental and repetitive, something I thought I would never enjoy.
The penchant for electronic music continued throughout the year. In October, while back in Boston and once again enduring the city’s dreadful winter, I discovered Róisín Murphy’s Mi Senti (2014) EP. It was the first semblance of any real work from her after Overpowered, and I was nothing short of impressed. Soft vocals and lyrics half-spoken over hypnotic production certainly reminded me of Grace Jones, but there was something uniquely magical about this EP. It felt sparse and magical, one could even say otherworldly. I ended up so deeply embedded in this type of music that I kept longing for new releases without any rich sounds. This was paradoxical given that the year started with two albums that were anything but minimalist in production.
It wasn’t until the summer of 2016 — which meant finishing my undergraduate program and getting through the first year of my graduate program — that I came across two monumental releases that would pull me out of this reflective vortex: Annie’s Endless Vacation (2015) EP and Christine and the Queens’ eponymous (2015) debut album. Annie’s EP served as the perfect transition from the Berlin-driven obsession with electronic music to a much-needed rediscovery of pop music. This shift allowed me to appreciate every layer of Christine and the Queens’ album, a record that showed me how equally energizing and heartbreaking dance-pop music can be. It was after listening to this album on repeat for almost three months that I realized why that was the case. Because of the lyrics. Not just any lyrics, but well-thought-out and personal lyrics.
So much of the decade up until that point was marked by appreciation for music with refreshing production, but I suddenly found myself looking for novelty in the artists’ songwriting. It took two years from that moment to find a release that would completely floor me with lyrical content.
Late 2010s
In 2017, I moved to San Francisco from Boston for my first full-time job. St. Vincent’s “Los Ageless” came out that fall and was very quickly followed by her album Masseduction. Needless to say, the record quickly became the soundtrack to California, my new-found home. I was still, however, subconsciously looking for an album or EP that would elevate the bar of high-quality songwriting.
Just as I settled into my new routine in San Francisco and stopped yearning for such discovery, Lorde’s Melodrama (2017) somehow found its way to my Spotify library in the spring of 2018. It really didn’t take long to notice the depth of the songwriting on this album. “Sober” and “Sober II (Melodrama)” were immediate standouts, and I particularly enjoyed the visceral portrayal of love, loneliness, and friendship in her Greek theater-inspired, hyperbolized songwriting. The lyrics were personal and direct yet so relatable and sophisticated.
With the exception of Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black album, this was really the only record that convinced me songwriting could indeed be a form of poetry. Even beyond that, Lorde’s work felt synesthetic: melodies would conjure up colors, the artwork would conjure up sounds, and the lyrics would conjure up my own memories, packed with scents of previous springs and falls. It was undoubtedly a modern-pop masterpiece and I will forever associate it with my first year in San Francisco.
After that ensued an album-burnout period during which I couldn’t listen to full-length records anymore. I nonetheless fell in love with a few singles that molded my taste, this time away from songwriting as the focus. I discovered Nipplepeople’s “Frka” (2017), an outstanding cover of Zdenka Kovačiček’s eponymous single from 1984. Their electropop rendition was by far one of the most unique productions I’ve seen arise from the Croatian music scene, and it led me to revisit many of the excellent Croatian bands that I didn’t listen to in a while, from E.T. to Yammat.
Few months afterwards, Nicki Minaj’s “Queen” dropped and I instantaneously registered “Ganja Burn,” “LLC,” and “Good Form” as tracks that would end up on my playlists. This was a surprising transition in my taste that year given that I haven’t listened to much hip-hop in 2010s at all. The low-key and evocative production coupled with Nicki’s poised flow somehow suited my mood that summer, making Queen a pleasant discovery of 2018. I didn’t know it at the time, but this particular record made me more open toward trap music, which would resurface in my playlists next year.
I quit my job that fall and was left with a lot of time to listen to music. Luckily for me, Robyn’s Honey (2018) came out at the end of October and the timing couldn’t have been better. “Send to Robin Immediately” really moved me; the meticulous build-up and softness of the production were unlike anything I’ve heard before. I could definitely feel influences of mellower house music, like DJ Koze’s “XTC”, in her songs, but there was something so vulnerable about Robyn’s approach toward these tracks that made the record truly original.
My mood was heavily shaped by Honey in late 2018, leading me to soon enjoy Emina Jahović’s Dalje (2018) album. This was also an unexpected gem: I am typically not in touch with Serbian music scene, but the Balkan-esque pop-house production and despondent lyrical themes were just the right sequel to Robyn’s album. Interlaced with these two releases, Soap&Skin’s “Italy” and “(This is) Water” (2018) were two tracks that left a mark on this period as well. Both albums and both songs were united by a pronounced sense of artists’ vulnerability and wistful introspection. Looking back, they reflected my state of my mind that fall as well, which would probably explain why I was drawn to all of them.
In January 2019, I started a new job. It took me a while before I had a new routine figured out, one in which I had enough time to listen to music. Once I did, Senidah’s “Aman” (2019) came as the first major discovery, and for me, it was a genuine shift in taste — I never thought I’d be obsessed with a Slovenian trap and R&B track. It was Nicki Minaj’s Queen from 2018 that made me more appreciative of this music. I’m glad that it did because “Aman” has now become a quintessential summer track, often reminding me of slow and reflective Croatian summers.
That August, I was working on a demanding project at work and ended up on Resident Advisor’s playlists in search of techno music that would help me focus. At some point, a catchy track started playing featuring a repetitive “Work, work it, work to be a winner” chant, which halted all my efforts to concentrate. The song ended up being the gateway track to Marie Davidson’s Working Class Woman (2018) album.
If the album had come out while I was still a student, I wouldn’t have fully understood the highly personal and relatable undertones of this layered techno record. It left an imprint on the rest of 2019, and I spent much of the fall and winter listening to “La chambre intérieure”, “Burn Me”, and “Work It” (as well as her unbeatable standalone single “Chasing the Light”). These tracks reinvigorated my love for techno and reminded me how introspective electronic music can be. Plus, I felt the entire album was the perfect soundtrack to my 9-to-5 routine.
Inspired by Davidson’s record, I dedicated the entirety of September, October, November, and December to electronic music. This meant I was — similar to my phase in Berlin — spending a large chunk of my free time researching and obsessing over new songs. Some of those incredible discoveries were Kelly Lee Owens’ “More Than A Woman” (2017), Klein’s “Claim It” (2019), Hiver’s “Pert” (2019), Asa Moto’s “Syriacid” (2017), and East of Ocean’s “Neverlasting Love” (2019). This time, however, to make myself feel more than just a consumer, I would also stay up late on work days and make music mixes using these new tracks.
At the turn of the new decade, as I unwinded from the monolithic stretch of electronic music, I then somehow stumbled upon Ariana Grande’s thank u, next (2019) album. I never paid attention to her as an artist, but this piece of work completely changed my opinion of her and made for a great last discovery of the 2010s. I was so impressed by the album’s cohesiveness despite it veering off into multiple genres, including pop, R&B, and trap. The most outstanding element of this record was its lyrical content, and I found myself analyzing other artists’ songs in greater detail after this album in hopes of finding equally personal writing.
Perhaps even more importantly, this uplifting album came into my life just before the COVID-19 pandemic, giving me a much-needed mental preparation for the omnipresent anxiety that would soon perturb the world.
Closing thoughts
From the bittersweet years of cramming for exams to the harsh era of a global pandemic, music was clearly an indispensable piece of my life at each moment of the last decade.
Writing this helped me realize that, despite new discoveries and many taste-breakers, my listening does seem to follow a consistent pattern—oscillating between introspection and extrospection across pop, R&B, electronic, and experimental genres. As I finished writing this, I also wondered: what music will the next ten years bring and how different will my taste be by 2030? Which memories will I associate that music with?
🕒 This essay is more than 10 years old (Published Sep 28, 2015).
This was a eulogy I wrote for my grandmother Azra, who passed away in September 2015. Known for her charisma and glamorous sense of style, my grandma was a talented puppeteer and a force of nature. The original text in Croatian is included at the end.
At first, you were kind of a phenomenon. Denis and Dean’s grandma from Norway who always brought presents. All the kids in the neighborhood knew who you were because the two of us always had the latest merch. From Pokémon to Harry Potter, you were up to date with the latest cartoons and trends, even though you probably had no idea who Harry Potter was or what a Pokémon looked like. We were so excited whenever you visited—we knew you would always bring some cool Norwegian fashion, some tasty Norwegian chocolate, and some unique Norwegian souvenir no one else in our neighborhood had.
And then you left the north, came back to Mostar, and moved in across the street. The presents stopped, but you regularly kept a good chunk of your monthly retirement cash in the living room so that you could surprise us with a treat.
“Pop over to Grandma Azra’s” became a new phrase in our lives. Every visit to your place was a high-end theatrical production: you were the main character in all your ornate stories while you showered us with unsolicited pieces of self-improvement advice.
“Whatever you do, I’ll tolerate” you’d say, “but don’t lie and don’t be stingy.”
The two of us laughed at you. I think we laughed because you found a way to always make yourself the center of the universe. And because you genuinely thought very highly of your own opinions.
In these stories, it was never the case that you were excited to see others, but others were excited to see you. No matter who was coming over for a visit, you always needed to look like a Hollywood star. You were so gracious with your compliments any time we did well at school, but you were also a harsh critic any time we did you wrong. You had to eat that special, organic tomato from the farmer’s market and had no patience for any other “fake” tomatoes. The funny thing is that you couldn’t even tell the difference any time we bought the “fake” ones and told you they were organic. You had no interest in what was happening in the world; you preferred to live in your own imagination, where—like the true Mother, the Queen you were—you had control over everything.
We would complain about you, Grandma, because you were a lot sometimes. Deep inside, though, I think we were all envious of your self-respect. Unlike many of us, you had the strength and courage to unapologetically love yourself. And that unapologetic love of yourself is what made you so incredibly lovable and popular to others.
In these last few months, your life started to slowly fade away. You no longer talked, and you no longer laughed. Your playful eyes lost that sparkle while your thoughts traveled endlessly through a distant past, through those days when you used to hang out with your friends by Neretva, through those days when you lived in Cernica and sang and danced.
For the last chapter of your life, you ended up in state in which you never wanted to end up. We, however, choose to not remember you like this. In our memories, you will be the magnificent Grandma you always were to us: warm, affectionate, gracious, honest, full of love, and so very full of life.
You never talked about faith or your concept of God, and I don’t think you thought too much about what would happen when you left this world. Whatever your view was, we know there is a special place up there for your radiant, carefree soul.
And so, Grandma, when you soar through the winds and the clouds today, and when you arrive at the celestial gates, far away in the eternal stillness of this universe, knock on those doors in the best edition of yourself: with a blow-dried hairdo, wearing red lipstick, in your velvet blue tracksuit with a brooch above your heart, and with a big, bright smile.
And as you reunite with Grandpa Nana up there, who’s been waiting for you patiently and faithfully for twenty years, we can already hear what you are going to say.
“My dear kids. If only you could have seen how excited Grandpa Nana was to see me.”
Kraljica Majka
Isprva si bila fenomen. Deanova i Denisova baka iz Norveške koja uvijek donosi poklone. Sva djeca iz naselja su znala za tebe jer smo nas dvojica uvijek imali najnovije igračke. Od Pokémona do Harry Pottera, uvijek si bila upućena u moderne crtiće i trendove iako vjerojatno nisi imala pojma ni što su Pokémoni ni tko je Harry Potter. Tvoje dolaske iz Norveške smo željno iščekivali kao djeca jer smo znali da ćeš sa sobom ponijeti neke norveške čokolade, norvešku robu, i norveške suvenire koje nitko drugi u naselju neće imati.
A onda si postala dio naših života kad si se vratila i uselila u zgradu prekoputa. Poklona više nije bilo, ali si zato u ladici svog stola u dnevnom boravku redovno i velikodušno odvajala dio svoje penzije kako bi nam dala da se počastimo.
“ ‘Ajde otiđi do bake“ je postala nova fraza u našim životima. Svaki odlazak do tebe je postao svojevrsna predstava; bila si glavni lik u svojim pričama dok bi nam davala savjete kako da poradimo na sebi.
“Sve mogu tolerisati,“ znala bi nam reći, “ali me nemoj lagati i ne budi škrt.“
Nas dvojica bismo ti se smijali. Smijali smo se jer si u svojim prepričavanjima uvijek nekako bila centar pozornosti.
Nikada ne bi znala reći da si se nekome obradovala jer bi se drugi uvijek tebi obradovali. Uredila bi se i izgledala kao zvijezda bez obzira na to tko ti je dolazio u posjetu. Veličanstveno si se naglas divila našim uspjesima u školi, i bila ponosna na nas, ali si nas maestralno znala i kritizirati. Jela si poseban paradajz jer su ti svi ostali kupovni bili bezveze, iako nisi nikada osjetila neku razliku kada bismo ti podvalili. Nisi htjela znati što se dešava u svijetu jer ti je bilo draže živjeti u svojoj mašti, gdje si kao prava Kraljica Majka, imala kontrolu nad svime.
Znali smo malo roncati na tebe, bako, jer si ponekad bila naporna. Ali, mislim da smo u principu svi bili pomalo ljubomorni na tvoje samopoštovanje. Čak i u svojim kasnim godinama, za razliku od većine nas, ti si imala snage i hrabrosti da sebe u potpunosti voliš. I upravo je tvoja ljubav prema samoj sebi privlačila ljude ka tebi.
Ovih zadnjih par mjeseci, tvoj život se postepeno gasio. Više nisi pričala i nisi se smijala. Tvoje razigrane oči su izgubile sjaj dok su tvoje nedostižne misli plovile kroz prošlost, kroz dane kad si se družila s rajom na Neretvi, kad si živjela u Cernici, i kad si pjevala i plesala.
Kraj svog života si dočekala u stanju u kojem nikada nisi željela biti. Međutim, mi te nećemo takvu pamtiti. Za nas ćeš uvijek ostati u našim sjećanjima kao naša čudesna baka: iskrena, topla, dostojanstvena, nasmijana, puna ljubavi, i puna života, koja nas je uvijek dočekivala raširenih ruku i s velikim osmijehom.
Nikada nisi pričala ni o vjeri ni o Bogu i vjerojatno nisi nikada previše razmišljala što će biti onog dana kada napustiš zemaljski život. Ali, mi znamo da se za tvoju lepršavu dušu čuva posebno mjesto na nebesima.
Zato, draga bako, kada se danas vineš kroz vjetre i oblake, i kada dosegneš nebeska vrata u svemirskim tišinama, pokucaj na njih u svojem najboljem izdanju, onako kako te se mi sjećamo—kao našu Kraljicu Majku, u svojoj baršun plavoj trenerci sa brošom preko srca, isfeniranom frizurom, crvenim karminom, i velikim, toplim osmijehom.
I dok se pridružuješ dedi Nani, koji te vjerno čeka već dvadeset godina, kao da već čujemo što nam želiš reći dok napuštaš ovaj svijet.
“Moja draga djeco, ne mogu vam opisati kako se Nana obradovao kada me ugledao.”
🕒 This essay is more than 10 years old (Published Sep 24, 2014).
Upon entering my college dorm room, one can see many things and at the same time see nothing. There is an arrangement of album covers on my wall, a set of birthday cards hanging from a poorly drilled-in screw, and a number of photos randomly spaced around the room. A few physical album copies are attached to the wall between posters, a dozen of boarding tickets can be seen on my doors, and there are some train tickets and name tags placed around them.
Everything is rather obvious at first sight. The family photos are there to remind me of my mom, dad, and brother. The train tickets are placed on my doors so that I never forget my trips to Milan, Amsterdam, and Berlin. The birthday cards are there to revive the celebratory emotions when I feel uninspired or unmotivated. But, in reality, there is much greater importance placed in each of these objects that can be felt, heard, and understood only by me.
The album cover of Soap&Skin’s album Lovetune for Vacuum on my wall takes me back to September of 2009, when I heard the song “Cynthia” and felt completely lost and insecure for the first time in my life. The small photo of my grandpa kissing my grandma on the cheek does not sit on my shelf because I simply miss my grandparents, but because I don’t remember my grandpa at all. The miniature stone version of Mostar’s Old Bridge reminds me of the unexplainable fear I felt when my friend gave me this present, before I left for MIT, and told me everything was going to be fine.
The conspicuous disco ball brings back to life the excitement I felt after discovering the world of techno music in a gritty Berlin nightclub. Ballroom Stars Vol. 2, a beautifully designed album by Casa Musica, sits under my lamp and helps me remember the joy of growing up and spending days with my ballroom dance partner.The printed black and white title Četvrtkom u 25 do 9, under a cracked CD case, which translates to Thursdays at 8:35 p.m., restores the unstoppable laughter and feelings of happiness I felt with my friends when we made a year-long, online TV show. The black and white photo of my parents stands next to my window and reminds me of the times when I used to hide under the blanket in our living room and listen to them sing Whitney Houston’s “Saving All My Love for You.”
And then, there is a list in my drawer. This hidden list contains an itemized collection of memories I don’t want to forget but which I did not materialize: seeing Manhattan for the first time, learning how to drive, dancing with my family on 1999 New Year’s Eve, sitting next to a pilot on a flight to San Diego, crying in my mom’s embrace on August 22, 2011, having my first birthday surprise party, saying “I love you” to my friend, sitting on bleach in NYC metro train, dancing salsa with a Cuban music band in a bar, falling asleep during my first opera, getting my first paycheck, and watching my little brother become a teenager.
These objects in my room, and in my life, are much more than a collection of items. They serve a higher purpose; they store something of utmost importance to me—memories. All these memories are manifested in physical form yet their essence is based on emotion, which is the most significant and intangible aspect of memory recollection to me.
There is something beautiful about storing past emotions in present-time objects. Many dislike these kinds of memories because they prevent one from letting go and moving forward, which can certainly be true sometimes, but there can also be a surreal sense of fulfillment when one surrenders to past feelings.
I like to re-experience memories from my past because, even though they invoke the same emotions, they provide a fresh perspective on previous events. They allow me to see how much I’ve changed—for better or for worse—and give me a sense of reference when I feel indecisive.
Most importantly, though, they let me keep track of all the people and events that entered my life, influenced my way of thinking, and found their places in my mind and in my heart.
