"Obaraš me s nogu" (1979)
As I lovingly peruse trough old vinyl records collection of what was pop music in Ex-Yu could it be that I'm getting old? I never listened those when I was there because kids are naturally attracted to foreign pop names - I found that Dejan Petković is actually one of the biggest mysteries for me, because he was terribly underrated and never one of the big shakers & moves, but guy was actually very good. From what I remember and what impression I always had, he was educated guy who played piano, composed his own songs and had nice, warm voice. He left handful of LP albums and few singles behind him, performed on festivals as everybody did back than, occasionally I found his name as composer on other people's albums and that was it. Ah yes, he was also brother of beautiful actress who won the crown on beauty contest.
The first thing that strikes you when you hear Pejaković is his voice - it was instantly recognisable, sensitive and mellow heartfelt croon, guy was natural singing talent and really pleasure to hear. Kind of Serbian Elton John/Billy Joel type, though I have deep suspicion that perhaps audience saw him more as Barry Manilow because he was never cool or rebellious, he was guy every parents would approve of (and was probably listened by teenage girls). This, his first LP album debut have its charm though I must say the chief pleasure here is singer's voice, not so much material which is over-produced and guy seriously tried to present him as being very cool, wild and what not (obviously he was very young and earnest) but give him a ballad and he really shines. It really pushes all sorts of nostalgic buttons but I do understand that Pejaković was perhaps too mellow for his own good - amongst other macho Balkan men he was a sensitive one. Mild and mellow.
"Emanuelle" (1981)
This was Dejan Petković's most popular album and I clearly remember some of these songs being played on the radio, he was kind of critics favourite more than anything else (mass audience never really warmed up to him) and its interesting to hear how just a small nuances made big differences - its basically very much the same sound as on his debut LP but now he sound more self-assured, this time around the lyrics have little more depth and the overall result is just fine. As expected, Pejaković is not the one for uptempo but he glows and glitters on ballads, specially when he has his own multi-tracked backing vocals.
Arsen Dedić provides one song (Pejaković wrote a song for his wife, so this was probably friendly gesture), there is a pretty classical-sounding instrumental "Jerina" (obviously he listened Elton John a lot) and the biggest his was "Moja Dijana" that perfectly describes his music persona of gentle, romantic who is overlooked because of his own sensitivity while girl goes for other guys. It is a very pretty, professional pop album that was often played on radio back than.
"Prevario sam se u tebi" (1983)
Dejan Petković produces the album himself - I must admit that I had enough of this early 1980s synthesisers sound and even back than found it boring & overused but it would be another decade before people turned to "unplugged" recordings as escape from electronics. I guess that everybody simply had to adopt with time and go drum machines, but to my ears this really sounds terribly dated. As usual, most of the material is composed by singer himself and its no surprise (happy tunes interwoven with gentle ballads) , lyrics are from various people (Marina Tucaković) and the overall sound is radio-friendly but either Pejaković got other priorities or something went wrong because we never heard from him again. If he is still around, it would be very interesting to hear from him again in acoustic setting, because guy was very good ballad singer and he would sound just fine when uncluttered with all these synthesisers.
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