Zdenka Vučković

Zdenka Vučković was a Croatian pop singer from Zagreb, born there on 20 June 1942, whose career spanned some sixty years. She was a real teenage pop star in the 1960s, and she is best remembered for "Moja mala djevojčica", known by its line "Tata, kupi mi auto", and for "Zagreb, Zagreb", which became an unofficial anthem of the city.

She grew up in a Zagreb family, the daughter of a mechanic who later became a well-known haulier and of a shop assistant, with a sister, Nada, five years older. When she won a children's competition at the age of eight, her parents sent her to music school, where she spent six years learning singing and the accordion. In 1957 she came second, behind Jasna Benedek, at Viki Glovacki's talent show Prvi pljesak in the Zagreb Varijete. A year later, at fifteen, she sang at the first Opatija Festival: "Moja mala djevojčica", a duet with Ivo Robić that won the festival, and "Kućica u cvijeću".

Through the decade she was one of Jugoton's best-selling stars. In 1963 she won the Zagreb Festival with "Zagreb, Zagreb" ("Vraćam se, Zagrebe, tebi") and took the prize for the best dance tune with the twist "Platno, boje, kist i tvist". That year she was also awarded at the Split Festival for "Veslaj, veslaj", sung with Arsen Dedić, while Marko Novosel and Gabi Novak sang the other version. Her radio hits included "Makovi", "Još samo pet minuta", "Dalmatinke male", "Čemu istina", "Nije li čudo to?" and "Pod lipovim cvijetom", and in 1964 she recorded an EP with Crveni koralji.

At the end of the 1950s she met the composer Krešimir Oblak, who became her constant accompanist with his small orchestra and her own composer; they married in 1971. She wrote Croatian lyrics herself for several songs, among them "Gdje su ti dani" ("Those Were the Days") and "Voljeti nekoga" ("To Love Somebody").

From the 1980s she appeared more rarely, and she said goodbye to the festival stage at the 1989 Zagreb Festival with "Odrasla je djevojčica mala". She still sang "To Love Somebody" in Croatian with Severina in 1991 and "Veslaj" with Luka Nižetić at the Split Festival in 2010. In 2021 an RTL list of the best Croatian songs ranked "Mala djevojčica" third. She died in Zagreb on 7 March 2020, after a short illness, at the age of 77.