Vili Resnik

Vili Resnik is a Slovenian pop and rock singer and guitarist, born on 27 November 1963 in Ljubljana. He fronted the band Pop Design in the early 1990s and represented Slovenia at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1998 with "Naj bogovi slišijo".

He started with music in the fifth grade of primary school, when he decided to become a guitarist, and he also learned the violin at school. As a young man he sang and played in several Slovenian rock bands, among them Herbie, Junaki nočne kronike, Pomaranča, Yunk and Spin. The big turn in his career came when he joined Pop Design, whose frontman he was from 1990 to 1995. With them he recorded some of the band's biggest hits, "Ne bom ti lagal", "Ko si na tleh" and "Potepuh".

In 1995 he went solo and released the albums Zdaj živim in 1996, Rad bi bil s teboj in 1997 and Zadnji žigolo in 1998. His early solo years took him to all the main Slovenian festivals. At EMA he came fifth in 1996 with "Nekdo, ki zmore vse" and sixth in 1997 with "Tvoja pesem", and at Melodije morja in sonca 1997 he won the award for best interpretation with "Ko vrbe jokajo", which later also brought him a Zlati petelin for best pop song.

His biggest festival success came in 1998, when he won EMA with "Naj bogovi slišijo" by Matjaž and Urša Vlašič. At the Eurovision Song Contest in Birmingham he finished 18th of 25, and that year the newspaper Nedeljski dnevnik named him singer of the year. The albums Odiseja in 2000, Reka želja in 2004 and Svet je lep in 2014 followed.

"Na fuzbal me pust", recorded when the Slovenian national team qualified for the 2002 World Cup, became a big hit, and his duet with Marta Zore, "Vse, kar sva bila", is among his best-known songs. In 2019 he made a comeback with a run of new singles, among them "Diham zate", "Ti si me čakala", "Lepa za umret", "Ona me ljubi" and "Moja generacija", a duet with the band Erosi that became a hit.