"Ti i ja" by Zdravko Čolić (1975)

Practically unknown just a few years earlier, by 1975 Zdravko Čolić was such a hot property that no less than five recording companies competed against each other with his releases - in addition to singles by Beograd Disk, Diskoton and Suzy, both PGP RTB and Jugoton came with his LP album in the same year - this is actually something quite unprecedented on local market and I can't think of any other name that got the same treatment.

If PGP RTB secured themselves nice piece of action with compilation that rounded singer's earliest recordings, Jugoton went for completely new material tailored specifically for him - Kornelije Kovač (his old boss from time in Korni Grupa) shoulders most of songwriting task, while no less than Arsen Dedić and Kemal Monteno were also invited to participate in a project that was meant to establish young singer as a unstoppable supernova and they all surely did good job because ever since Čolić basically never lacked media attention. Add Goran Bregović to that mix and you get curious amalgam of names that around the same time collaborated on each other's projects - Kovač also produced album for Dedić who praised Monteno on every occasion, while song "Loše Vino" eventually reoccurred again very next year on album of Bregović's rock band Bijelo Dugme. Surrounded with such seriously talented musicians, twenty four year old singer simply couldn't fail but it must be noted that he was genuinely up to task and vocally he was absolutely convincing in anything they threw at him, be it fluffy pop jingle "Život Je Lijep, Helene-Marie", bombastic pop hit "Zvao Sam Je Emili" or genuinely dirty rock "Igraš Se Vatrom" where guitarist from Indexi (Slobodan A. Kovačević) burns in the background - the last one has Bregović's signature all over it and it is a rare occasion where this artist experiments with rock, something that he rarely did in the future. In hindsight, ""Ti i ja" served as test ground for various directions he might explore and from now, the rest of decade Čolić was our biggest pop star with such enormous following that this new phenomenon was seriously analysed even in political circles, where surprised bigwigs discussed is he a good influence on our youth (contrary to wild and obviously untamed Bijelo Dugme, Čolić was eventually considered wholesome and not threatening).