INNA — From Hot to El Pasado, Every Studio Album

INNA was born Elena Alexandra Apostoleanu on October 16, 1986, in Mangalia, Romania, and grew up in Neptun, on the Black Sea coast. She studied political science at Ovidius University in Constanța.

While she was working in an office, her manager heard her sing and put her in touch with Play & Win, a Romanian production trio. She first recorded pop-rock as Alessandra in 2008, then switched to house music and took the name INNA, the name her grandfather called her as a child.

With four million copies of her first three albums sold worldwide, she is the best-selling Romanian artist. She won the MTV Europe Music Award for Best Romanian Act three times, in 2009, 2010 and 2015, and since 2017 she has been a coach on Vocea României Junior.

Her first single, Hot, went to Romanian radio in August 2008, topped the Romanian chart that winter, and went on to top Billboard's Hot Dance Airplay chart in early 2010. The album Hot followed on August 4, 2009, written and produced by Play & Win in Constanța. Amazing became her second number one in Romania, and Déjà Vu was recorded with Bogdan Croitoru under the names Bob Taylor and Anni.

I Am the Club Rocker came out on September 19, 2011, after Sun Is Up reached number two in Romania. Party Never Ends followed in March 2013, with More Than Friends featuring Daddy Yankee and In Your Eyes featuring Yandel. In 2014 she signed with Atlantic Records and released Cola Song with J Balvin, used to promote that year's FIFA World Cup.

Her fourth album, INNA, came out in October 2015 after a Japanese edition called Body and the Sun, and it gave her a third Romanian number one with Diggy Down.

Nirvana followed in December 2017. YO, released on May 31, 2019, through Global Records and Roc Nation, was the first album she shaped herself, all in Spanish and made with the producer David Ciente. Heartbreaker came out on November 27, 2020, recorded in three weeks in a house where she filmed daily vlogs, the first season of Dance Queen's House.

Champagne Problems came from the second season and was released in two parts, #DQH1 on January 7, 2022, and #DQH2 on March 11, 2022. El Pasado followed on April 5, 2024. Between those records she released Up, later remixed with Sean Paul, which became her fifth Romanian number one, and Good Time with Pitbull.

Both are in the Greatest Hits playlist.

What sets INNA apart is how far a song made in Constanța traveled. Hot was part of a wave of Romanian popcorn songs that succeeded outside the country, and it went from Romanian radio to the top of a Billboard dance chart in the US.

She also kept changing. The early albums are built for the club, Party Never Ends and Body and the Sun lean toward Latin pop, YO is all in Spanish, and Heartbreaker and Champagne Problems are dance-pop records made in a few weeks in a shared house with Romanian songwriters. Play the 121 songs in order and you hear fifteen years of one career, from Hot to El Pasado.