Emotional
Croatian pop diva who has attained the status of a
national treasure. Like the other stars of her era, she is still remembered fondly elsewhere in the former
Yugoslavia -
Slovenia,
Bosnia,
Macedonia and
Serbia and Montenegro - where her career began in the mid-1980s.
Doris had been the lead singer of the group
More (Sea) for several years before going solo in
1986 with her breakthrough hit,
Željo moja. The
soft but strong ballad won the national preselection to represent Yugoslavia at the
Eurovision Song Contest that year, where she unaccountably finished 13th behind, among others, an Irish band called
Luv Bug and a Dutch one by the name of
Frizzle Sizzle.
Željo moja is still one of Doris' best-loved songs today, and heralded three or four years' worth of albums which rank among her most accomplished work. Typical are the ten on
Budi se dan (
The day awakes,
1989), which ratchet the melodrama dial
up to 11: its opener,
Ja noćas umirem (
I'm dying tonight) can only be described as the four and a half minute long result of fusing anguished
Balkan folk music with the collected works of
A-Ha.
During the war in
Croatia, Doris was one of many singers to wrap themselves in the flag for the duration, happening upon an unofficial
national anthem in
1992 with
Dajem ti srce, zemljo moja (
My country, I give you my heart), its refrain entrusting Croatia into
the care of God.
The chorus of her
1994 song
Sedam mora, sedam gora (
Seven seas, seven mountains) bears a strange resemblance to the hook of
Deutschland Uber Alles. Released only three years after
Germany had been the first country to recognise Croatian independence, that might not be such a silly idea.
By
1999, rapidly becoming the honorary
mother of the nation, Doris had been signed by the prolific impresario
Tonci Huljić, the man responsible for a significant proportion of the
etno kitsch that filled Croatian airwaves during the presidency of
Franjo Tudjman.
Her previous collaborator, the doyen of Croatian composers
Zdenko Runjić, had provided her, in numbers such as
Haljina bijela, haljina crna (
White dress, black dress), with pop from which the kind of academic who can turn
Madonna into their life's work - although probably nobody else - might even draw an allusion to the signalling arrangments of the legendary king
Theseus.
The refrain of her first hit with Huljić,
Marija Magdalena - to be found on her
1999 CD unimaginatively entitled
Krajem vijeka (
At the end of the century - ran, 'Marija Magdalena, ah ah ah ah ah ah ah.' And this from a lyricist, Huljić's wife, who used to write
children's books.
Doris took
Marija Magdalena to Eurovision too, although the journey was dogged with minor scandal from the outset: a rival,
Ivana Banfić, claimed her song had been deliberately disqualified from the preselection by the state broadcaster
HRT, and in particular an executive implicated in the
Miss Croatia scandal of the previous year.
Less than a week before the contest took place, an official complaint was laid against the song by the
Norwegian delegation, alleging that Huljić had broken Eurovision rules by adding synthesised vocals in the background. With only one
backing vocalist on stage with Doris, and that a woman, it was probably tempting fate to expect her to convincingly mimic an entire
male voice choir.
Doris nonetheless achieved a respectable fourth place in
Jerusalem, thanks in no small part to her song's similarity to the
1998 winner by
Dana International and her strategy of whipping off her toga during the
middle eight to reveal a dress made of white bandages apparently inspired by
Milla Jovovich's alien in
The Fifth Element.
In
2001, Doris released
Lice (
Faces), an album of dance songs not a million miles away from what was then
Cher's latest reinvention. More in keeping with her usual style, however, was
2002's
Malo mi za sricu triba (
I need a little to be happy), filled with the
Dalmatian ballads that have made her name. One is encouraged to believe these are what wafts through
Adriatic harbours on late summer afternoons. The fact that you might well only hear
fishermen shouting at each other is neither here nor there.
The fans of
Hajduk Split, one of Croatia's leading football clubs, have taken Doris to their hearts, earning her the title 'Queen of the
Torcida', as they name themselves in honour of
Brazilian supporters. Doris also has something of a
gay following, if only because
what diva hasn't; it's to be hoped that the conversations when her two
fan bases encounter one another might result mutually beneficial.