Agropop

Agropop are a Slovenian pop band whose driving idea came from Aleš Klinar. Formed in 1984, they broke up in 2000 and came back in 2025. The classic line-up had singer Barbara Šerbec - Šerbi, Polde Poljanšek on guitar and saxophone, Simon Pavlica on guitar, Urban Centa on bass and Dragan Trivič on drums.

The roots go back to 1982 and a group called Tri palme, known for "Der Kaiser kommt mit Mercedes", which Radio Študent put on the air. A year later they became Sajgons, and at the end of 1984 came the breakthrough. Poljanšek and Šerbi had written some funny songs with a colleague and recorded them purely as a joke. Radio editors heard them and entered "Paradni tango" at the Pop delavnica, and "Mesarjev sin" followed. At first another singer sang and Šerbi was meant to be the band's dancer.

Offers to play came within two weeks, before they had a set. Under the name Bugatti they first appeared in Črna na Koroškem as the backing band of Marjan Smode. At their first concert of their own, in Zeleni gaj, they ran out of songs after twenty minutes and, because the crowd wanted more, simply played everything again.

Their songs made fun of everything typically Slovenian. Firemen and farmers were their favourite characters, drinking a regular subject, and the music was deliberately simple, written for a wide audience. They expected Agropop to last from March to the summer; it lasted sixteen years. They filled Ljubljana's Tivoli hall with 8,000 people at a time when it mostly hosted foreign acts, and opened for the Leningrad Cowboys at Križanke.

In those sixteen years Agropop released fifteen albums, among them a hits collection and a live album, from Melodije polja in sonca (1984) and Pesmi s Triglava (1986) to Misliš, da sem seksi? (1991), Lepo je bit Slovenc! (1993) and Ko prašiči obmolknejo (1999). Together they sold around half a million cassettes and records, and "Samo miljon nas je" is among their best-known songs.

Around 2000 most of the original members left, and Agropop carried on for a while as a project with changing line-ups. In 2010 a live hits album, Skupaj se veselimo, was released to raise money for Šerbi. In 2017 the writer Desa Muck built the stage show Alpska saga around the band's hits, directed by Jure Ivanušič. In 2025 Klinar and Poljanšek revived the band with Maja Bobnar, Dejan Krajnc and Andreja Sonc, now mixing pop with turbo folk and narodnozabavna music.