Ivana Selakov

Ivana Selakov is a Serbian pop-folk singer, born on 8 November 1978 in Belgrade. She grew up in Sombor, where she finished primary school, a lower music school and a social-linguistics gymnasium, took part in singing competitions and sang in jazz and rock and roll clubs. In 1997 she started studying biology in Belgrade, but soon turned to music, and in 2002 she graduated in sound design and music production from the Academy of Arts in Belgrade.

For years she worked behind the stars. She sang backing vocals for almost every major Serbian pop-folk performer, with more than 3,000 backing vocal recordings in the Fonoteka archive by the Serbian Wikipedia's count. As a soloist she appeared at the Radio Festival and at Beovizija 2006. In 2007 she was one of the backing singers who helped Marija Šerifović win the Eurovision Song Contest for Serbia, and for two years she belonged to Beauty Queens, the girl group formed from them, singing "Pet na jedan", "Protiv srca" and "Zavet".

Since 2007 her records have come out through Grand Production. Her first solo album, Sreća (2010), included the hit duet "Ako je do mene" with Darko Radovanović, and that year she also sang on "011" on Boban Rajović's album Boban. Probijam led (2012) featured Aca Lukas on "Daleko si", and S.O.S (2016) two more duets with him, "Omaklo mi se" and "Ljubav u doba kokaina". A third, "Svatovi", was taken off YouTube after a day, and the two are no longer on speaking terms. Her songs also include "Još ovaj put slaži me", "Sad odlazi", "Izabran", "Srce gubitnik" and "Moje je ime sreća". Later singles include "Da se opet rodim" with Mirza Selimović (2017), "Hitno" with DJ Shone (2019), "Boli boli" with Amar Gile (2020) and "Kamata" (2024).

Ivana Selakov has also taught singing for years and mentored young singers, was a judge for three seasons on the children's show Neki novi klinci, and sang in the Serbian versions of The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast.