Jelena Karleuša

Jelena Karleuša Tošić (Serbian Cyrillic: Јелена Карлеуша Тошић; born 17 August 1978), professionally known under her maiden name Jelena Karleuša, is a Serbian turbo-folk singer.

Also, Jelena is columnist and a human rights activist. Today, she is one of the singers who are most present in the Balkan press, while her actual most recent album sales are disputable. The numbers of tickets sold for her shows are also a matter of controversy, depending on what media the information come from. She rose to fame with her debut album Ogledalce (1995), and has since gained popularity in the former Yugoslavia. In 1999 she released Gili, gili which had a pop sound and changed Karleuša’s music style. Album Diva was released in 2012 becoming one of the most successful albums in Serbia, according to her PR team. She held two big concerts: All About Diva Show (Beogradska arena, 2010 and Viva la Diva Show (Belgrade Ušće, 2013).

Karleuša's public image is one of a self-proclaimed "diva", "star" and an alleged fashion icon, with her PR team highly publicizing alleged copying of her stage and everyday's outfits by world famous celebrities which proved to be a successful strategy in boosting her public presence, including a massive number of followers of her official Instagram profile. In 2006, Karleuša launched her own fashion brand, named JK Wear.^[1] The collection included dresses and other accessories.

In 2010, she was guest star on the reality show Big Brother All Stars VP for two days.^[2] The same year, it was rumored Karleuša would start her political career,^[3][4] as she openly supported the ideas of Zoran Đinđić and Čedomir Jovanović.^[4]

In 2011, her song "Muskarac koji mrzi zene (Hologram)" was outright plagiarized from a K-pop song called "Lucifer" by Shinee.^[5] However, years later, in 2015, Karleuša accused Kim Kardashian of copying her fashion style, citing several outfits that were similar.^[6] Recently The Wendy Williams Show also showed Beyoncé wearing very similar looks that Karleuša had worn previously.^[7]

In September 2015, Karleuša became a member of the jury in the singing talent show program "Zvezde Granda".^[8]

Life and career

Early life

Jelena Karleuša was born in Belgrade, Serbia, to father Dragan (born 1 January 1947 in Belgrade),^[9][10] a senior police officer, and mother Divna (born 25 January 1957 in Slovenia).^[11] Her maternal grandfather Jurij was from Ptuj, Slovenia, a military pilot, and her maternal grandmother Darinka (died 2004) was from Doboj, Bosnia and Herzegovina.^[12] A maternal great-great-grandmother of hers was of aristocratic background and married a working class Montenegrin.^[13] Karleuša was born and raised in the Fontana neighborhood of New Belgrade.

Career

She began her singing career as a singer in the mid-90s and gained popularity with her debut album, Ogledalce (1995), selling more than 10,000 copies in Yugoslavia. Later, she started singing pop music exclusively. She has since had several #1 hits, most of which were written by Marina Tucaković. Jelena has released ten studio albums, which charted in Serbia, Karleuša's single, "Insomnia", featuring Mirza Hamzić, was downloaded 1.5 million times from her website, just a day after its official premiere on 30 December 2009, the final night of the reality show Big Brother. "Insomnia" became the third most viewed video on YouTube, with over four million viewers for two weeks.^[14] The video was later deleted from her YouTube channel, but later re-uploaded. Her jubilee tenth studio album Diva was released on 11 June 2012. According to her own sources, but never officially confirmed by any other, the record sold over 200.000 copies during the day of its release, allegedly becoming one of the fastest selling albums ever on Balkan and the fastest album to be certified gold, although it remains unclear by which instituition the said categorization had been established in the first place. Ten months after the release of Diva, Karleuša performed guest vocals on Ferrari, a single by Karleuša's Krimi rad collaborators Teča and Nesh.

Karleuša also gained some international interest, including some minor, often parodic coverage in the western media, because of her sense of style, featured in her Instagram photos. With more than one million followers, she has the most followed account in the Balkans.

Her eleventh album is expected to be released in 2018. She announced it by performing two duets which premiered on June 28, 2017 in the finale of the show Zvezde Granda, with folk star Aca Lukas callled Bankina and with Bulgarian superstar Azis called Ostavljam te.

Personal life

Karleuša married Bojan Karić, the nephew of Serbian businessman Bogoljub Karić, in 2004.^[15] They divorced after two months. On 29 June 2008, Karleuša married Serbian football player Duško Tošić.^[1] On 7 September 2008, she gave birth to their first daughter, Atina, named after the Greek goddess Athena. Their second daughter, Nika, was born on 7 September 2009, and named after the Greek goddess of victory Nike.

In 2010, Karleuša began writing her own column for the Serbian newspaper Kurir, in which she criticized Serbian celebrities such as the politicians Boris Tadić, Čedomir Jovanović and Ivica Dačić, and singers Lepa Brena and Ceca.^[16] She stopped writing it in November 2010 as she was "afraid for her own security".^[17][18] Her column drew criticism, with some people stating she was just trying to draw attention.^[19] Karleuša is known for supporting the LGBT community and has received numerous awards as a gay icon.^[20] In its November 2013 issue, W magazine featured Karleuša in an article about pop stars outside the United States.

During a February 2013 interview on a television show she revealed that in 1997, in the backstage of Minimaks's talk show Minimaksovizija, Minimaks was assaulted by Serbian criminal Željko Ražnatović when he defended Karleuša after she claimed that every Serbian singer was a "whore".^[21]

Discography

Studio albums

• Ogledalce (1995)
• Ženite se momci (1996)
• Veštice, vile (1997)
• Jelena Karleuša (1998)
• Gili, gili (1999)
• Ludača (2001)
• Samo za tvoje oči (2002)
• Magija (2005)
• JK Revolution (2008)
• Diva (2012)

Compilation albums

• The Diamond Collection (2009)

Live albums

• All About Diva (2010)

Videography

• Ogledalce (1995)
• Najbolja drugarice (1995)
• Ženite se momci (1996)
• Sad smo stranci postali (1996)
• Preživeću (with Dejan Miličević) (1998)
• Gili gili (1999)
• Ludača (2001)
• Samo za tvoje oči (2002)
• Manijak (2003)
• Slatka mala (2005)
• Upravo ostavljena (2006)
• Tihi ubica (2008)
• Mani se (with Gale) (2009)
• Insomnia (Dark version) (2010)
• Insomnia (Light version) (2010)
• Muškarac koji mrzi žene (2011)
• Krimi rad (2012)
• So (2012)

Awards and nominations

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Jelena Karleuša.

• Official website