EARLY YEARS

Born Tatjana Matejas in Zagreb, Croatia, Tajči (TY–chee) comes by her love of classic American music honestly. From an early age, she loved the Broadway musicals from America she saw on TV in what was then Communist Yugoslavia.  

SUPERSTARDOM

At the age of 19, Tajči became a superstar in Central Europe when she electrified an international TV audience, estimated at over a billion people, in the Eurovision Song Contest. The release of her recording of “Hajde da ludujemo” (“Let’s Go Crazy”), coupled with the fall of the Berlin Wall, sparked a wave of optimism and an adulation for the attractive, engaging teenager – much like the Beatlemania phenomena the West had experienced thirty years earlier. As thousands of people of all ages jammed Tajči’s concerts, her records achieved Platinum and Diamond sales. There was a Tajči doll, newborns were named after her, and the European magazines and tabloids filled their pages with Tajči stories and photos.