A bit later on the day than you’re used to from us, but here’s our pick of the 90s, coming from Nick again, introducing us to an entry he thinks only he likes!
Bosnia-Herzegovina 1995: Davor Popović – Dvadeset Prvi Vijek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUWLmUZLfjU
Sometimes, you feel like there are songs no one else even remembers apart from you. This one is one of those for me. I discovered it a while ago when I was going through Eurovision history and never realised how much I like this Bosnian entry.
Bosnia-Herzegovina, a country which often does reasonably well in the Eurovision Song Contest. An eternal qualifier – you know the drill. They also had some less impressive results, like this one. 49 year old Davor entered the stage already having had quite the career in the former Yugoslavia with his group Indexi with a song about the 21st Century, or well a song about a lost love, warning her for the 21st century, which is coming. Davor only managed to gather 14 points with his performance, bringing him nineteenth only.
I’m sure you know the feeling of hearing a song and thinking it’s absolutely great, until you ask your friends what they think and their reply is the infamous ‘Meh.’ It’s a reaction this song often gets, because in the light of Fazla, Hari Mata Hari and Dino Merlin, who remembers Dvadeset Prvi Vijek? Who remembers that middle aged man from Bosnia-Herzegovina in the year of Jan Johansen, Anabel Conde and Secret Garden?
Not many, I assume. But I do think this song deserves more attention than it currently gets in the Eurovision world, as I still see it as a great understated entry by a great performer. He sadly died in 2001, aged just 55. His legacy includes many songs, albums, the monument (as pictured in the article’s header) and the Davorin Awards, now called Indexi Awards: the Bosnian music awards, which are given out every year.