Brena's Silver Jubilee

The Serbian tabloid Svet has two landmarks to celebrate this week: Ceca Ražnatović filming the first video from her comeback album Idealno loša, and Lepa Brena marking her '25-year reign as the queen of narodnjaci.'

Brena herself will be releasing a new album in the autumn to celebrate her silver jubilee, and a big tour is planned for next year. (To include Croatia? And she'd better not clash with Magazin's.)

According to Svet, the HTV entertainment show Špica is currently filming an item on Brena (no more details as yet), for whom, contrary to certain appearances last autumn, there evidently is some room on HTV. Svet itself carries a long interview with Brena this week: carried out by the Croatian journalist Darko Hudelist, it needless to say begins by asking Brena her thoughts on Severina's Moja štikla, which apparently reminds Hudelist (and he's not alone) of 'your early hits, for instance 'Sitnije, Cile, sitnije'.

(Brena's response? 'Well, now, 'Sitnije, Cile, sitnije' is Njegoš's 'Mountain Wreath' in comparison to 'štikla, cikla, nikla, pikla'...')

Brena goes on to reflect on her debut album with Milutin Popović Zahar (now a sharp critic of today's Serbian showbusiness), her inappropriate outfits for TV, her interrupted plans to launch her transnational career in Turkey, and her experiences during the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

Brena also stresses that she considers 'that showbusiness and politics can't [go] together in these territories of ours':

'--Isn't Ceca an example which proves the opposite?

--Everyone chooses their own way. I chose a way that lets both me and my children go to America, and Australia, and Canada, and Croatia, and Bosnia, and Macedonia.'