Lea Dekleva

Lea Dekleva is a Croatian singer, songwriter and composer, born on 12 December 1977 in Zagreb. She went to primary and secondary music school and plays the piano and the oboe. Before her own career took off she sang backing vocals for Parni valjak and for Davor Radolfi.

Her first solo album, emociJA, came out in 2005 and became the first Croatian album to be included on iTunes, the world's largest music download service. At the 2006 Porin awards in Osijek she had two nominations: best new artist for emociJA, and song of the year for "Nevera", which Oliver Dragojević sang on his album Vridilo je.

She wrote most of the songs on that 2005 Dragojević album. She also wrote "Volim te" for Maja Vučić's album Lice koje znaš (2006), and "Možda nam uspije" and "Preživjet ću" for Marko Tolja's Stare dobre stvari (2009). Her own song "Dogodila se ljubav", recorded with TBF, won the Porin for best vocal collaboration and for song of the year, and was nominated for hit of the year in the televote.

As one of the three most played songwriters in Croatia in 2010, she took part in Dora 2011 as the author of "Još ima nas", sung in turn by the finalists Jacques Houdek and Daria Kinzer; the song was not chosen for Eurovision. After a long break from recording she returned at the Zagreb Festival in 2023 with "Na slobodi", performed with The Chord Company.

The playlist here is her Topic channel: "Dogodila se ljubav" in its versions with Saša and Mladen of TBF, "Drugačije od svih", "Balada iz predgrađa", "Dišperadun", "Daleko" and "Još sam tu", live recordings such as "Mornareva žena", and "Ja bi da te slijedim", recorded with Matija Dedić and Gabi Novak.