We’ve all heard the Bonbon song. You may not know the exact name, and it may not be in your top 10 most played Spotify songs (with almost 90,000,000 listens on the platform), but you’ve heard it. It’s likely your first exposure to it was through a Marshmello remix. it. In fact, you’ve probably described it quite literally as “that bonbon song,” so good on you for already knowing the name!
I first heard It while in an uber at 3am flying through the streets of Chicago and immediately thought to myself, “Wow, Rihanna has some serious fire here, how come I haven’t heard this song before…. also what language is she speaking…?” I fired up Shazam and was pleasantly surprised to find a brand new artist to add to my November streams. I quickly did some digging the next morning and found out I wasn’t alone in confusing her with Rihanna, apparently the entire internet had made the same mistake I did.
So who is this Rihanna-esque singer with the eye-catching pink fur coat? Era Estrefi is a 22 year old singer/songwriter from Kosovo who up until this year was relatively unknown outside of her southeastern part of Europe. She gained notoriety with the BonBon song music and it started making it’s rounds on social media. Once it hit around 30 million views, Ultra music took notice, put a record deal in front of her, and the rest is history.
We love this song. We do think the original version is better in her native Albanian tongue, and should be way more popular. Sure the English version gets more attention state-side, but it just doesn’t have the same vibe to it. Maybe it just sounds more mysterious when you don’t speak the language – or maybe it just sounds a little more hammy in English. Just our two cents.
Follow Era Istrefi on Twitter: @Strefie