Croatian pop singer Elvira Voća was one of the ubiquitous names of people who performed on pop festivals in 1960s, 1970s and 1980s without any visible success or purpose - you might even ask yourself why did they bother at all - kind of also-runner but never really specially interesting, outstanding or original in any way. Pleasant, mild voice without personality that could hold a tune, attractive blonde looks and in a nutshell that was all: unfortunately for Voća,there already was another blonde with far more style and personality and her name was Gabi Novak. So Voća was always perceived as a second-rate Novak and I can imagine how frustrating it must have been to be someone else's copy.
Voća happened to be married to a certain influential croatian composer and probably thanks to him she was often invited to festivals - for the life of me I can't remember one single hit of her career or why she should be remembered at all. I mean, other people made occasional splash here and there, something unusual, perhaps some brave experiment that failed but at least they were exciting - not so Voća who always played safe with her soft crooning voice that sounds like somebody who works in kindergarten, undistinguishable repertoire that sounds like anybody else around, really.
Her 1980. LP has actually stellar list of songwriters (Arsen Dedić, Zdenko Runjić, Zrinko Tutić, Drago Britvić, Maja Perfiljeva) and its all fine,mild and mellow but there's no way around admitting that Voća sounds exactly as one would expect - a pretty housewife of composer who is pushing her. The album is actually not bad, songs are probably fine and kind of music you immediately forget after they were played on the radio - but oh,no personality whatsoever. This is your mother crooning or some nice lady next door who for some strange reasons imagines herself a singer. Voća actually covers Gabi Novak song "Ako želiš da se vratiš" (Arsen Dedić) that brings absolutely nothing new to it except pointing at the fact that she really lacks that magical something that makes a great singer. Closer inspection to a back cover shows that album was not released by giant "Jugoton" but by much smaller PGP RTB which also points that commercially this was not seen as a potential big seller.
The rest of decade this pretty blonde spent on a local festivals - when invitation ceased, her husband basically arranged participations on smaller festival in countryside of Krapina where old-timers often performed in local dialect but this was of course far from mainstream or national level. She had also recorded two abysmal albums with covers of current 1980s hits, they are so brilliantly bad that they deserve special essay. Her story really makes one wonder why these people bothered to spend a life in music if they had nothing extraordinary to show, why even going on a stage if you are only mediocre?
Voća was a pretty woman but I had to put here a single cover that was so incredibly bad that I can't help to think somebody in recording company sabotaged her - I mean,covers really help to sell the products but this one was chosen to stop one dead in the tracks. WTF?
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