Vlatko Ilievski

Vlatko Ilievski was a Macedonian singer and actor, born on 2 July 1985 in Skopje. He began playing guitar at about twelve in local Skopje bands, and his first serious step came in 2000 with the group Made in Macedonia, which won two awards at the Macedonian Rock-Fest that year.

In 2001 the rock band Moral (Морал) invited him to an audition, and in early 2002 he became widely known as their singer through the video for "Mora da e koshmar". The band and Ilievski won the Golden Ladybug (Zlatna bubamara) award for best newcomer, released the album Koga patuvam in 2003 and were named group of the year by MRT in 2004. In 2005 Moral opened for Deep Purple in Skopje.

He went solo in 2007 and released two albums of ten songs each, So drugi zborovi and Najbogat na svet; his hits include "Nebo", "Pak na staro" and "Roza sine". At Skopje Fest he finished 13th in 2009, and in 2010 his song "Srekja" won its semi-final and tied with the eventual winner in the final, but the jury vote made him the runner-up. On 27 February 2011 he won Skopje Fest with "Rusinka", written by Grigor Koprov, Jovan Jovanov, Vladimir Dojčinovski and Marko Marinković, a song about a Macedonian boy in love with a Russian girl.

At the Eurovision Song Contest 2011 in Düsseldorf he sang eleventh in the second semi-final on 12 May and finished 16th of 19 with 36 points, so Macedonia did not reach the final. He returned to Skopje Fest in 2015 with "Sever-Jug", a duet with Risto Samardžiev.

Vlatko Ilievski also studied acting at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Skopje, graduating with a play based on Stephen King's Rage, and acted in TV series such as Nashe maalo (2002), Od denes za utre (2010) and Kum (2014). Moral released Kofein blues at the end of 2017 and played their last concert together in early 2018. He died on the evening of 6 July 2018 in Skopje, four days after his 33rd birthday, and was found in his car.