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49 albums · 1956–2025

Music of Croatia, from the Split festival and klapa to the new wave of Zagreb and today

· 1 min read · by 1001 Albums

A klapa in Dalmatian costume singing at microphones in a stone square at night
Oliver Dragojević singing with an acoustic guitar on a red-lit stageBaby Lasagna singing into a microphone in a lace-sleeved costume at Eurovision
Klapa Kartolina at the Festival of Dalmatian Klapas in Omiš, 2019. Photo: Klapa Kartolina, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Oliver Dragojević on stage in Slavonski Brod, 2010. Photo: Frka, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Baby Lasagna in the semi-final of Eurovision 2024 in Malmö. Photo: Wojciech Pędzich, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Croatia's popular music has a coastline and two cities at its centre: Zagreb, where Ivo Robić cut the country's first LP in 1956 and Arsen Dedić and Josipa Lisac recorded after him, and Split, whose summer festival gave Oliver Dragojević, Tereza Kesovija and Mišo Kovač their songs, with the klapa, the unaccompanied singing of the Dalmatian towns, behind all of it; around them the new wave of Zagreb with Haustor and Film, the rock of Prljavo kazalište and Parni valjak, Dino Dvornik's funk, in the nineties Hladno pivo, Majke, Darko Rundek and Pips, Chips & Videoclips, Gibonni and Severina for the charts, Let 3 from Rijeka, the hip hop of Edo Maajka and TBF, and Baby Lasagna, who came second at Eurovision in 2024. The list has 49 records from 1956 to 2025, one or two by each of the names above and only a small part of what they made; Azra is missing because its records are not on Deezer, and tamburica music, classical music, the songs of the inland regions and the diaspora would each need a list of their own. About 35 hours of music, 5 days of a few records each.

By genre

Rock 21%Pop 14%Punk & New Wave 6%Other 59%
  • Rock 21%
  • Pop 14%
  • Punk & New Wave 6%
  • Other 59%

The genres named most: croatian, rock, pop, hip hop, new wave, punk.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 1 country: Croatia 49. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1950s

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Countries first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.