Branka Sovrlić

Branka Sovrlić is a Serbian folk singer, called a Bosnian and Serbian folk singer in English sources. She was born in Mostar in 1957. Her father served in the army, and the family moved first to Skopje and then, when she was ten, to Niš in Serbia, where she grew up and which Serbian sources call her lifelong home. That Serbian upbringing is why she is on Muzika-Balkan under Serbia. She later lived in Belgrade, and since the mid-2000s she and her husband, the restaurateur and former music producer Sadik Pašić Paja, have lived between Belgrade and Sarajevo, where they run two restaurants.

Her career began in 1984 at MESAM, the music fair in Belgrade, where she sang "Trebaš mi", and her first album, Treba mi, came out the same year. Albums followed almost every year: Mazo moja (1985), 100 godina (1986), I bez tebe živeti mogu (1987), Dođi još jednom (1989), Ti se ni boga ne bojiš (1990) and Ludo srce (1991). She sang at the Hit parada festival in the mid-1980s and returned to MESAM in 1990 with "Lagao si" and in 1996 with "Volim te".

In the 1990s came Najdraži moj (1993), Mazo mazo (1994), Medu moj, šećeru (1995), Tebe nema (1996) and Crna vila (1998), and later Osveta, Opasna žena and Urnebes (2011). Her best-known songs are "A tebe nema", "Lido, Lido, Lidija", "Nemoj da me moliš šta ti je" and "Bilo bi dobro". Apart from her singing she was known for her long blonde hair and daring stage dress, and she is also a fine interpreter of sevdalinka.

After a period in which she sang mostly abroad, she returned to the stage in Serbia, and in October 2011 she performed at the "Volim devedesete" concert in Belgrade's Arena. She has also sung at the Ilidža festival near Sarajevo and, in 2023, at the Sabor narodne muzike Srbije in Belgrade with "Ja život volim". The playlist is Branka Sovrlić's 1993 album Najdraži moj, with "A tebe nema", from her own channel.