Talented singer and beautiful woman, Maja Odžaklijevska unfortunately never got her really big break into first major league of pop stars - and it wasn't for the lack of trying. She was constantly present on various local pop festivals all over Ex Yu, toured internationally and even performed in theatre (excellent as "Koštana") but it seems that her strong, impressive alto voice really needed strong composer who would knowingly create tailored repertoire. Give her a strong song and she was brilliant - sadly, for the most of her career she was dragged down with uninspired mainstream pop that constantly veered towards bland radio fodder and that voice was mostly wasted.
Take this LP album, one of two she ever had released.
It starts very energetic, kind of disco-rock and before you know, the record suddenly ends in safe, ballad territory that placed her as neither completely rock, neither pop singer. Since the material came from mostly same team of successful composers/lyrics writers (A.Ilić/S.Marković/M.Tucaković) it is very unusual that these people couldn't find anything more original instead of this music. When inspired, Odžaklijevska can really thunder with that great voice but here she mostly croons and sounds subdued. I can't help but to wish she had better luck with composers - unfortunately in this she was not alone, from the top of my head I can think of another great singer (Radojka Šverko, for example) who got stuck on pop festivals without ever creating strong music identity.
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