Andrej Šifrer

Andrej Šifrer is a Slovenian singer, songwriter and composer of popular music, born on 1 May 1952 in Stražišče pri Kranju. Over five decades he has written songs that many Slovenians know by heart, from "Vse manj je dobrih gostiln" to "Za prijatelje".

His first band was Ajvar & Co., but his music career really began in 1971 with the group Tektiti. He made his first recording in 1975 and caught the media's attention in 1976 with "Zoboblues". Music went hand in hand with his studies: on 30 June 1977 he graduated from the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana. In those years he also sang at festivals across Yugoslavia, with "Vonj železniških postaj" (1977) and "Brat" (1978) in Zagreb, "Ljubav iz trafike" at the Belgrade Spring in 1979 and "Uspavanka" in Opatija in 1980.

His debut album Moj žulj came out in 1978, followed by Od šanka do šanka in 1979. That second album was ranked 90th in YU 100, the 1998 book by Duško Antonić and Danilo Štrbac listing the greatest Yugoslav rock and pop albums by a poll of critics and musicians. More records followed with Ideje izpod odeje (1981), Nove pravljice za upokojence in otroke (1983), Hiti počasi (1990), Underground Cowboy (1991), the live album Ole, ole, ole... iz Buenos Airesa (1993) and Sedem irskih noči (1994).

Among his best-known songs are "Vse manj je dobrih gostiln", "Moj oče", "Bil sem mlad", "Debeluhi", "Martinov lulček", "Ostani z nami" and "Gorska roža". In 1998 he won Slovenska popevka with "Za prijatelje", taking first place with 6,905 phone votes as well as the expert jury's award for the best song. He also wrote the music for Naša krajevna skupnost, one of the most watched Slovenian television series.

Šifrer kept recording through the following decades, with Čakam (1998), Muza moj'ga bluza (2000), Lipicanci (2009), Srce in razum (2015), 40 let norosti (2017) and 40 let Moj žulj (2019) among his albums. For his 70th birthday in 2022 the Gorenjski muzej opened the exhibition "70 let - NIČ proti VEČnosti" in the gallery of Prešeren House in Kranj, where his father Franc had been the caretaker. It showed more than fifty original objects, from posters and awards to gold and platinum records and a guitar whose neck cracked after 2,500 concerts.

In 2023 he tried his hand at writing and published Volkovi with the publisher Didakta, presented as the first Slovenian pop rock music crime novel.