Moni Kovačič

Moni Kovačič, born Monique De Haviland, is an American-Slovenian pop singer, born on 21 June 1960 in Frankfurt, Germany, at a US Air Force base. Her mother, Brigita Kovačič, was an actress from Vrhnika, and her father, Bill De Haviland, a pilot and jazz trumpeter from Wisconsin; she learned Slovenian at school in Ljubljana and started her career there, which is why she is counted among the artists of Slovenia.

She spent her first years in Connecticut before the family moved to Salzburg, where she went to ballet school and the Mozarteum music school. She began performing at twelve, sang with the band Dr Pepper, winners of a youth festival in Villach, and at fifteen was discovered by the producer Peter Kraus, with whom she recorded her first songs for Austria and Germany as Monique, such as "Ich such' einen Boyfriend" (1976).

After her father died and she finished school, she moved with her mother to Ljubljana at seventeen and signed with Radiotelevizija Ljubljana and the producer Dušan Velkaverh. In 1978 she won the audience vote at the very first Melodije morja in sonca with "Nasmeh poletnih dni", and at the Opatija festival she sang "Brez ljubezni mi živeti ni", released with its English version "Love Is Life" on the B-side, said to be the first such single in Yugoslavia. The same year she recorded "Srček dela tika taka" with Ivo Mojzer.

She then moved to Zagreb and Jugoton, where she made the albums Zagonetka (1980) and Može i jače (1982), and with the producer Veselin Oršolić released around 60 songs, among them "Mala bjonda", "Mister Univerzum", "Budi moj drug", "Na desetom katu moji su Havaji" and "Ne okreći se". In 1981 she studied at Berklee in Boston. In 1982 she sang "Romeo i Julija" with Srebrna krila at Jugovizija, where they came fourth, and in 1988 she returned there with Simona Weiss and Urška Drinovec.

In 1985 Moni Kovačič moved to the United States, toured for six years with her band and settled there, recording solo albums such as Illumination, Slovenian Boy and Home for Christmas. She still sings, with Mötley Blues, Out of Bounce and Moni & the Moonlighters, and in 2017 she was back at Melodije morja in sonca with Igor Mikolič and "Dober par".