Stereo Love

Before "Stereo Love", Edward Maya was a student at the National University of Music Bucharest, where he wrote songs for other Romanian acts. He contributed songwriting to Mihai Trăistariu's Eurovision entry "Tornerò" in 2006, later worked with Costi Ioniță and Blaxy Girls, and produced tracks on Akcent's 2009 album Fără lacrimi, which yielded the hits "Stay with Me" and "That's My Name". Around this period he was in a relationship with Vika Jigulina, a Moldovan-Romanian musician who had worked in Romanian clubs and at radio station Vibe FM. Together the two wrote "Stereo Love", released as their debut single for Romanian radio airplay on 23 February 2009.

The track is a Eurodance, techno and trance song in the Romanian popcorn style, with lyrics about lovesickness and a prominent accordion hook. That hook interpolated "Bayatılar", a 1989 song by Azerbaijani musician Eldar Mansurov, whose contribution went uncredited at first and sparked online debate about plagiarism. Mansurov complained to the Romanian Copyright Office, and he and Maya signed a contract settling the dispute at a press conference in Baku on 19 January 2010. The song reached number two on the Romanian Top 100 in August 2009 before becoming a worldwide hit, topping charts in countries including France, Spain and Ireland.

Dragoș Buliga directed the music video, released on YouTube on 6 July 2009 and shot on the Greek island of Mykonos, where Maya and Jigulina search for each other through the streets. "Stereo Love" later won "Top Dance Song" at the 2011 Billboard Music Awards, the first such win for a Romanian act, and opened Maya's debut album The Stereo Love Show (2014).