Dania’s ‘My Baby Calls Me Habibi’ is a Beguiling Ballad About Longing
The NYC-based, Syrian-Croatian songstress is on top form once again, with a track that adds new layers to her 'sad girl music' stylings.
Syrian-Croatian artist, Dania, has never shied away from the emotional and the performative when it comes to her music, albeit with her very distinctive twist.
In the New York-based singer-songwriter's latest release, the bilingual ‘My Baby Calls Me Habibi’, she leans into the unhurriedly dreamy and balladic sound that has become to be her trademark and gained comparisons to the likes of Lana Del Ray and Lana Lubany.
Flattering as they are, said comparisons do Dania an injustice. Beyond the label of ‘sad girl music’ - a label that she has happily embraced over the years - her latest track is anchored by a decidedly more romantic soul. It’s all carried by a simple but ambient and, at times, ethereal, combination of swelling strings and plush piano that bears the hallmarks of low-fi bedroom pop.
“I can feel my heart break, waiting on a version of you that will never change,” Dania sings in the chorus, continuing: “Rose water, chocolate cake, he never turns around before the light begins to fade.”
It’d be too easy to simply consign the song as an ode to the doom and gloom of heartbreak or unrequited love. While wistful in its words, it also feels like a gentle goodbye to the past. It's a musing melody of what she wishes could have been, preserved without pain.
Even as the song fades out to the lingering lines “He says habibi but he never stays / Mab yifhem shi, then he walks away,” - it’s a clean break, not a bitter one, a final farewell that chooses calm over conflict, acceptance over angst.
