Josipa Lisac in 2016

Croatian artist who had a huge impact and influence on my formative years is still going strong, despite slowly reaching the age when most of her contemporaries have already retired. When I was growing up, Josipa Lisac was literary the only female rock singer we had and I was absolutely fascinated with her although my family viewed this with amusement, as this was not some really popular or commercial artist, in fact my spontaneous choice of music idol happened to be more of a cult singer who appealed to a certain, urban audience but nowhere near chart smashing successes of other, more mainstream names. On national level, she enjoyed huge respect but was not universally embraced in a way some of her show business colleagues were and I clearly remember countless insufferable entertainers clowning on Sunday afternoon TV shows, while Lisac (being acquired taste) was invited only sporadically. It was a true mystery of my teenage years that the rest of the world did not recognise this fabulousness, since everything about her music, image and looks spelled true star to me and nobody had to explain this to me, I simply knew this was someone special. 

It was much later that I eventually started to understand that this uniqueness (which so much appealed to me) might have been a problem for majority of mainstream audience who simply couldn't place Lisac in any box - from the very beginning she was assertive, urban chick who could sing circles around other colleagues, was equally skilled in maddeningly wide choice of music genres, had unrepentantly  mannered style and on top of it all thrived on extravagant, theatrical costumes so audiences in distant, provincial or rural places simply had no connection to it. Everything that so much fascinated me simply did not appeal to people who were conditioned to accept entertainers while Lisac never clowned, she was the white crow in a bunch and enjoyed it. When I was teenager I seriously thought I just have been the only person who loves her and hence my surprise when I eventually found myself in a very crowded concert sometime in 1983-4 where audience clearly knew every single song. Being only female rock singer also meant that she never had any competition around, though I feel that she would have liked it (Serbian artist Slađana Milošević came good decade later and she was nowhere near vocally interesting) but to my biggest surprise, during subsequent years and decades Lisac eventually came to be accepted as national treasure and people slowly realised that eccentric, unusual and odd as she might have been, she is constantly around and the whole generations of singers came and disappeared but Lisac is still here.

Although she performs and tours regularly during rest of the year, Lisac always organises a special concert annually in December, which is tribute to late Karlo Metikoš who was love of her life, her partner, composer and biggest supporter. In fact, the determination to keep his memory alive is probably the main motivation for Lisac to continue singing as she insist to sing songbook he wrote specially for her - Metikoš was extraordinary talented composer who wrote only for her and encouraged her to be as creative, wild or brave as she wanted (in fact, for all her alleged eccentricity, he might have been even more so). Seeing the pictures taken during the concert earlier this December I am truly happy that her career goes strong and that audiences admire someone who started back in 1967. At this point she had outlived careers of everybody around.