"Da L' Se Sjećaš" by Krunoslav Kićo Slabinac (1986)

Sad news - Kićo has passed away today at respectable age of 70+ and I got inspired to re-visit this mid-1980s LP that I don't remember ever listening before. It is actually not really a "new album" but a collection of his biggest hits up to that point, re-recorded again as it was a practice in 1980s - I never understood the logic behind it, because radio and listeners always preferred hits in their original versions, but many artists were doing this, perhaps in attempt to modernise their old music. Like many of the singers of his generations, Kićo started as a young rocker with a genuine band, just to embrace mainstream pop festivals and "schlager" music, which brought him to wider audiences and he successfully juggled genres as highly popular host on TV shows - a genuine charmer, Kićo could do anything, from Elvis to standard traditional folk material and Christmas music - in fact, his 1983. Christmas LP came as a brave statement at the time when this was not accepted in the country.

Hrvoje Hegedušić and his team of studio musicians have wrapped all these re-recordings in a mid-1980s sound, so you can expect a lot of synthesisers but to be honest, this didn't bring anything new or fresh to original songs that were already well-known in original versions. Kićo peaked commercially in the 1970s and subsequently merged in the background together with most of the artists from that particular generation, while new, angry young artists took the spotlight. As this albums shows, he still had that attractive voice but he also mellowed perhaps too much for his own good and all these generic ballads didn't really create any excitement - naturally, nothing wrong with the music here, these are all pop classics from a specific era, but if you want to hear "Zbog Jedne Divne Crne Žene", "Plavuša" or any of these songs, you would be better off with original singles - to my ears the cold, 1980s production just sounds aseptic and sterile. 

Just like Dalibor Brun and Darko Domijan, Kićo was one of those people who knowingly and decidedly swapped youthful energy and enthusiasm for middle-aged conformability and large part of his work was focused on pleasing mainstream audiences - this collection focuses on his pop festival incarnation, but he also showed great affinity for traditional folk music.