Ivana Popović Martinović

Ivana Popović Martinović is a pop singer from Montenegro who has spent more than twenty years on the Montenegrin festival scene and twice came close to representing the country at Eurovision. No source gives her birthplace, but her whole career has been made in Montenegro, and in 2024 the association of Montenegro's performing artists honoured her for twenty years of work on its music scene. She grew up in a village with her sisters, the daughter of two educators, studied at the Faculty of Philology in Nikšić and is also a self-taught painter.

Her start came in 1999 in Nikšić, when a friend asked her to stand in for a singer at a concert and she sang "Zombie" with Dragan Lučić Luj on bass; the same year she won first place at the "Grade moj" festival. She later won the karaoke contest Idol and Intro run by Ivan Maksimović, and in 2004 she sang "Odlazim" at the Sunčane skale festival in Herceg Novi.

In 2005 she took part in Montevizija with "U oku tvom", finishing ninth with 18 points, which took her to the national final Evropesma-Europjesma, where she finished 13th; that final was won by No Name with "Zauvijek moja". In 2008 she sang "Od puta do puta" with Neno Murić at the Ohrid festival, and in 2010 released "Suza za kraj". Since 2010 Vladan Popović and Marko Milatović have arranged and produced all her songs, among them "Slobodna" and "Dodaj", which she sang at Sunčane skale in 2012 and 2013.

At Montevizija 2018 she sang "Poljupci", written by Slavko Milovanović and her husband Ljubiša Martinović, and finished fourth with 12 percent of the televote. A year later she wrote the lyrics of "Nevinost", came second in the first round of Montevizija 2019 with 12 points and lost the superfinal to D Mol's "Heaven", by 38 to 62 percent of the public vote.

"Javi se", made for the CMC festival in Croatia, came out on 1 June 2023 on Croatia Records, followed by "Iluzija" in 2024. In November 2024 she marked twenty years on stage with an evening in Podgorica called "Vrijeme za ljubav", where she also sang with her sister Nela Popović, and in 2025 the two sisters released "Dvorište ljubavi".