Boris Novković

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Boris Novković (born December 25, 1967) is a prolific Croatian singer-songwriter.

Novković was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, (at the time, a part of Yugoslavia). His interest in a musical career was cultivated by his family background, with a mother who taught music, and a father, Đorđe Novković, who was a leading Croatian songwriter and music manager. He released his first album, Kuda idu izgubljene djevojke in 1986, selling 120,000 copies, while his follow-up release in 1987, Jači od sudbine, was more successful still. Two more successful albums followed: Dok svira radio in 1988 and Obojeni snovi in 1989.

In 1990 he narrowly missed out on the chance to represent Yugoslavia at the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Dajana", but his second-place finish in the national pre-selection instead secured him a place at the International festival in Kuala Lumpur. Seven more albums followed up to 2003, as well as two "best of" compilations, but few songs were able to match the popularity of the early ones. Perhaps most notable are Struji Struja from the eponymous 1993 album, "Sve mijenja se" from U dobru i u zlu (1995), and "Daleko" from the 1997 album Sve gubi sjaj bez ljubavi.

In 2005, fifteen years after his near miss in the Yugoslav pre-selection, Novković won the right to represent the now independent Croatia at the Eurovision Song Contest. He performed his song "Vukovi umiru sami" ("Wolves die alone") together with members of the Lado ensemble. To win the Dora pre-selection competition on 5 March 2005, they had to vanquish an impressive array of former Croatian Eurovision representatives, including Magazin, Danijela Martinović, Vesna Pisarović and Goran Karan.

Despite the respectable showing of Croatia's 2004 Eurovision entry "You Are The Only One", the country did not achieve a high enough placing to qualify automatically for the 2005 grand final. Thus Boris' song had to be selected among the ten semi-final entries to go into the final. Novković represented the country in the Eurovision Song Contest 2005 in Kyiv and finished eleventh.