Gala Dragot

From The Voice Kids over Eurosong to experimental dark jazzy music, it’s not your average career path. It is the road that 20-year-old Gala Dragot is on right now, though.

Born in Brussels in 2005, she is a Belgian-Albanian singer-songwriter and the daughter of artist Robert Aliaj Dragot and translator Mimoza Dino. She first appeared on a wider public radar after winning The Voice Kids Belgium in 2020, and soon after released her debut single “Contagious”, which received notable attention and airplay.

In 2023 she further established herself in Belgium’s pop landscape by competing in Eurosong, the national selection for Eurovision, with her self-written track “T’inquiète”, finishing third while receiving the highest score from the professional jury.

Since those early pop-oriented steps, Dragot has gradually moved toward a more experimental, genre-blurring identity.

She has collaborated with acts such as The Subs, worked with Zwangere Guy on the Putain soundtrack (“Equinox”), and expanded into acting with a role in Come Back. Her recent artistic profile also includes a high-profile performance for Dries Van Noten during Paris Fashion Week 2026, underlining her crossover between music, fashion, and performance art.

Her debut EP “twerking music” is presented as a stylistically eclectic project, combining piano-led compositions with elements of experimental pop, jazz-inflected harmonies, free-form structures, and glitchy electronic textures.

Across tracks such as “femcel anthem”, “bees and we”, and “punish me”, Dragot explores themes that are consistently documented in interviews and press material: digital overwhelm, identity formation, body image anxiety, emotional intensity, and the pressures of online visibility.

What makes the EP stand out is its refusal to settle into a conventional pop framework. Instead, it often prioritises atmosphere, fragmentation, and emotional expression over traditional hooks. This can make it challenging on first listen, but also more rewarding over time. There is a clear artistic ambition to move beyond her early talent-show image and into a more auteur-driven space.

The EP is not flawless in its execution — some ideas feel more like sketches than fully developed songs — but it is undeniably bold for a debut. Its strongest quality lies in its cohesion of mood: a dark, theatrical, and emotionally exposed sound world that feels intentionally unstable.

There is a strong chance that fans of Soap&Skin, Zola Jesus, Maria Arnal i Marcel Bagés, Julia Holter, or The Dresden Dolls could spend hours absorbed in “twerking music” by Gala Dragot.

Overall, “twerking music” positions Gala Dragot less as a mainstream pop export and more as a young experimental voice still defining her language. It is uneven, but compelling, and it confirms her as one of the more distinctive emerging artists in the Belgian alternative scene.

Stream “Twerking Music” LP on Spotify.

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Gala Dragot on Facebook, Instagram.

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