Jan Plestenjak

Jan Plestenjak is a Slovenian pop singer and guitarist, born on 27 March 1973 in Ljubljana. He grew up in Škofja Loka, the son of the painter Dora Plestenjak, and over more than three decades he has become one of the most familiar names of Slovenian pop, with fifteen albums and more than fifty music videos.

He began playing the guitar as a child, went to music school in Škofja Loka and then studied guitar at the Secondary School of Music and Ballet in Ljubljana. In those years he played with the Interaction jazz group and worked with Quatebriga and the Big Band RTV Slovenija. At eighteen he was accepted at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he spent a year, and he later continued his studies at the conservatory in Klagenfurt.

His career started at eighteen. At Pop delavnica in 1993 his song "Naj stvari so tri" won the award for the most modern sound. At EMA he finished fifth in 1995 with "Ker te ljubim" and third in 1999 with "Moja dežela", and he returned in 2001 with "Vse je OK", all of them his own songs.

His songs, often described as Latin pop-rock, include "Amore mio", "Iz pekla do raja", "3x me poljubi", "Bela noč" and "Tvoj song". In 2009 he released his ninth studio album, Klasika, with older hits in new arrangements with a symphony orchestra, and presented it at a sold-out Hala Tivoli. In 2011 he received the Viktor award as the most popular musician. "Večja od neba" was ninth among the songs most played on Slovenian radio in 2013, and its album was awarded a gold record.

His thirteenth studio album, Dvigni krila, came out in 2015, introduced by the single "Stara dobra" and with a new version of "Ko mene več ne bo". Lea Sirk, Omar Naber and Manca Špik sang backing vocals on it. His fourteenth album, Za vedno, brought "Roke stran" in 2019, joining earlier favourites such as "Jaz že vem zakaj" and "Velik je ta svet", and later came a duet with Monika Avsenik, "Vse bo, vse bo".

In 2023, at fifty, he said he would release singles rather than full albums. In June 2026 he marked 33 years of his career with a sold-out concert at Ljubljana's Križanke with a symphony orchestra, where he sang "Prazna postelja" with Rok Lunaček of Flirrt.