The Beautiful Mess Kristian Kostov
“Look, the sea is right there!” he exclaimed while flipping the phone to give me a better view from the small café he was sitting in. He then appeared in the frame again and flashed me a big smile. Despite looking at Kristian Kostov through a computer screen, I could feel waves of serenity engulfing me whole, all the way from the way he sits to the way he drinks his coffee. At this moment, I did not see Kristian Kostov the musician, nor Kristian Kostov the Eurovision and X Factor contestant, I saw Kristian Kostov as a person enjoying life.
Kristian was born in Moscow, Russia to a Bulgarian father and a Kazakh mother. He is currently in the sunny town of Benidorm, Spain. “My mother’s in Bulgaria, my dad’s in Russia, the rest are in Kazakhstan. I want to bring them all here and live here, at least for a while.” He has lived in Russia his whole life; however, it was only after the war in Ukraine that began in February 2022 that he realized that a house is not a home.
Kristian did not know from the very beginning that music would become his whole life. “My mom and my aunt wanted me to actually become a financier — I was really good at math. It would’ve been perfect — my brother a lawyer, me a financier, and my sister a model,” he smiles. His musical career started with piano lessons — that is why he was good with pitch, despite him not yet being the best at vocals. “I mainly started singing because I was so shy and I hated myself so much, I was so closed-off that I could not communicate with people whatsoever.”
Little by little, things started to work for him just because he showed lots of persistence. His popularity skyrocketed when he decided to sign up for the first season ever of the Russian The Voice. “This was like a dream. Oh my god, I’m going to be one of the first singers to participate in such a project,” he recalls. “And later on I became one of the most famous contestants for my season.”
After becoming a finalist for the show in Russia, he decided to shoot his shot for X Factor Bulgaria. While on vacation with his parents at the Black Sea, he signed up for the competition at the fragile age of 15. “X Factor was for 16 and up, and the producers told me that they were willing to make an exception for me because they liked my voice and my story.” In order to actively take part, however, he had to learn Bulgarian and he had limited time to do so. “While we were shooting backstage, I spoke to the producers and the crew in English and they helped me translate the phrases into Bulgarian for me to learn quicker — I learned it in less than 8 months.” At the age of 15, he won second place in one of the country’s biggest shows.
Eurovision came next — in 2017, he represented Bulgaria with the song Beautiful Mess and won second place from over 40 countries participating. However, while talking about this time of his life, his face fell and his demeanor changed drastically. If silence could pierce in this moment, it sure would have. “I lost. I’m still in therapy when it comes to Eurovision. I lost something that I cannot get back.”
There were long pauses between his sentences as if it was painful for his voice to follow his thoughts. “Maybe then I lost that last child bit of me. Kristian as a young kid, the purer soul stayed on the stage and got left behind.” For some people, this was just a competition; however, he described this as one of his toughest moments and something that drained him mentally, despite the good memories from the process itself.
His reaction, I later on realized, came from something that he calls a “Russian mentality”. He describes himself as quite the gentle and calm guy; however, when it comes to competitions, it’s a whole different story. “I lose my shit, and I become the most annoying person ever,” he states. “I work for like 15 hours straight and then rehearse for an extra 5 and then I sleep for 3 hours — it’s all in. If I’m not gonna win this, I’m a loser, boo.”
This comes from his upbringing — everyone around him, including his parents, repeatedly encouraged him when he was little that he was the best, the coolest, and the most good-looking. “And then you have exposure from the real world, you understand that you’re far from being the best, you’re not the coolest and you’re not the most good-looking.”
Despite him realizing that the world is not black and white, Kristian did not let that stop him from actively trying to be the best version of himself. He recalls a time when he was little — probably 7 or 8. One day he took a look around him and saw these amazing singers, songwriters, and dancers. That’s when he thought to himself: “I should start watching some Disney movies with stars like Miley Cyrus in them, and then it clicked for me: this is it, I’ll become like them too — 3 hours Camp Rock a day for 7-year-old baby Kris in order to motivate myself.”
Immediately after his pursuits on various stages around the world, people started to recognize him everywhere and anywhere. When asked whether he was anxious about the sudden fame, he replied: “Well of course not, I’m Miley Cyrus now. Of course they know me,” he laughs. Kristian is down-to-earth and a brutally honest at times person and that is why he hates when artists start to purposefully undermine their own abilities. “You’ve worked for this so freaking much, spent more than a hundred hours on your project and you know you’re good; instead of being shy, be proud of it.” That’s why he proudly presents and wears himself today for who he is and what he has achieved. “Imagine I’m a dentist and I do my job well — would I be going around telling people that I’m not good at what I do just so that I can appear humble?”
Kristian now has the ability to create music by himself and for himself. Behind him are a team of close friends and his brother who help him with everything, from production to songwriting. Kristian recalls the time when he had group therapy with his brother, Daniel, and his wife, and towards the end of the session, they came to the conclusion that, despite Daniel being older, Kristian is the “bigger” brother and he is in the lead rather than Daniel. He is more of a supervisor because he knows how he wants the sound to flow and what road to take. “I have huge luck with my family but working with your family isn’t the best option for everyone,” he adds. “I just do my best to make sure that people around me do not feel bad and I give them space to maneuver and express themselves.”
His latest song, Iris, was actually composed in a couple of minutes. “My brother and our friend started to play the piano and I just started singing — we immediately used the melody as part of the song.” The lyrics as well came somewhere from within and in an hour the text was also done. Therefore, everything came together in a matter of hours. The production itself came up to more than a hundred hours though. This further proves how well his whole team functions as a whole.
Despite his professional life eating up a lot of his free time, he has set his priorities straight. “I want my whole family to live here. I want them to move, my plan is to work and have financial stability — we all have European citizenship.” While saying this, he looks through the big window of the café that points directly toward the sea and gets lost in his thoughts. It was as if he stopped talking directly to me but rather to himself, in a way. “I realized that it doesn’t matter whether I spend 10,000 euros or 500 euros a month — I might feel shitty while spending more and might feel the best while spending less — it all comes down to family honestly.”
It was at this moment that I realized that despite his success and popularity, Kristian did not even once forget what is important to him and what brought him to where he is today. He flashed me an even wider smile this time and asked the server for one more coffee in broken Spanish. I did not feel the same waves of serenity engulfing me whole anymore; I rather felt like I was in the center of the tsunami that Kristian is. What a beautiful mess he truly is.
Vladimira Korueva is a university student double-majoring in Business Administration and Journalism. She aspires to deliver impactful and substantial information to the public.
